The Jesuit Church

The Jesuits are well-known to be pretty flush with money and from the looks of this church, I'd say they had plenty of money to have built a place this opulent.

About this church from Wikipedia...

The Jesuit Church was built between 1623 and 1627 on the site of an earlier chapel, at the time when the Jesuits merged their own college with the University of Vienna's philosophy and theology faculty.^[1] The emperor broke ground for both college and church, with the church itself dedicated to Saints Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier.

In 1703, Brother Andrea Pozzo, S.J., an architect, painter, and sculptor, and a master in the quadratura, was requested by Emperor Leopold I to redecorate the church. He added twin towers and reworked the façade in an early Baroque style with narrow horizontal and vertical sections. The design of the windows, narrow niches (with statues), and the small central part of the façade deviate from the Baroque style of the towers. Pozzo died unexpectedly in 1709, just before he was to move to Venice, and was buried in the church.

After the completion of the work, the church was re-dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.

It is a glorious place filled with extravagant decorations and paintings. Note in the image below that the dome you see to the right side is actually a painting on the curved ceiling. Clearly, the artist had a keen grasp of perspective to have painted one shape on another and made it appear correct. Of course, if I move to another vantage in the nave, this looks wrong and the illusion is revealed.

In fact, you can see the failure of this illusion at the top edge of the image below. However, this is an amazing space to stand in.

The extensive use of gold here around the rich wooden pulpit makes clear how much the Jesuits wanted to please God and also to to feel pampered themselves.

The marble chosen for the columns and the windows is really special. The contrast of the colors is striking.