This was by far my favorite portion of my trip to Europe and, subsequently, also my favorite building during my Bavarian encounters. This is a church called St. Blaise’s Church and is located at the bottom of a cliff in the quaint little town of Salzburg in Austria, famous for being the location of the events portrayed in The Sound of Music. This happened to be the last leg of our journey abroad and this location proved to be an excellent way to wind-down in preparation to our final trip home.

I have always been fascinated with nature and man’s effect on it. However, so often it is seen that highly metropolitan areas developed in the United States during the 20th century show little to no incorporation of nature into the elements of man. This building does just this, though whether it was intentional or not I am unaware. The climbing ivy coupled with the overall relative simplicity of the exterior walls create a sense of balance between man and nature, a concept that I find poetic and that, I think, should be the purpose of all architecture. Not only did I get to witness such a building, but I was fortunate enough to have been able to see it at such a time as autumn where the reddening ivy is made more beautiful by nature’s ever-changing seasons.

The architect of this building is unknown.