The relatively small church of St John the Baptist – a Roman Catholic Gothic church of the Knights Hospitaller of St John, on Kärntner Straße in the 1. Wiener Gemeindebezirk Innere Stadt, in Vienna – is generally known as the “Maltese church”.

I visited this modestly beautiful church in December 2007. Unfortunately, at the time there were neither leaflets nor anybody who could have helped with some information about the church.

The following information was gathered from the site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_Church ,_Vienna where a photo of the high altar with the titular painting of St John baptis ing Jesus, by Johann Georg Schmidt, is also reproduced.

“The first church on this site is mentioned in 1217, as a ‘House of the Prueder of the Order of St John’, a commandry to care and support crusaders. The current building was built in the mid-15th century. In the 17th century it was a favoured preaching location for Abraham a Sancta Clara. This building was rebuilt to fit contemporary taste in the Baroque era in 1806, while the Kommendenhaus (1839) and parts of the church (1857) had stained glass added during the 19th century. The Order ran into financial trouble after World War I and in 1933 had to sell the church and the Johanneshof; the church was given over to other uses within a historical preservation order. It was bought back in 1960 and restored in stages in 1968, 1972, and 1983–84, finishing with a general restoration in 1998. The church’s high altarpiece was painted in 1730 by Johann Georg Schmidt.”

I took photos of a marble plaque and a basrelief recording the feat of the knights under Grand Master Jean de Valette in the Great Siege of 1565, the white marble pulpit, statues adorning the church, and the façade. Even though there is no comparison with the impressive Baroque churches with which Vienna is enriched, this church is worth seeing by Maltese visitors to Johan Strauss’ mythical city.

Otherwise, for the foreigner, this church and the distinguishable red eight-pointed cross (in marble) seen above the main door, and adorning the altar and pulpit in the interior, are ambassadors to our island’s history enriched by the val-iant Knights Hospitallers (once of Jerusalem and of Rhodes) of Malta between 1530 and 1798.