Look for the pale sandstone figure of a robed man standing on a flared pedestal, cradling a crucifix against his chest just behind the metal bridge railing.
For centuries, locals affectionately called him Hansl am Weg, or Johnny on the path. Carved around 1750, Saint John of Nepomuk was placed here to protect travelers and guard the nearby mills against the unpredictable, destructive floods of the Liesingbach creek.
But in 1977, the saint needed a little protection himself. A car crashed directly into the bridge, completely obliterating the baroque monument.
The impact was devastating, shattering the centuries old sandstone into countless jagged pieces. The locals immediately rushed to gather up the rubble, determined to save their beloved statue, but they quickly ran into a rather glaring problem. The head was gone. Despite scouring the crash site and wading through the adjacent creek bed, the saint's head had vanished without a trace. You can imagine the colorful local gossip about exactly where a heavy stone head might have wandered off to in the middle of the night.
But the people of Unterlaa refused to let their local guardian end up in a landfill. Saving the monument became a point of local pride. They hired a sculptor named Kamenjetzky, who painstakingly studied old photographs to carve a brand new head from scratch, fitting it seamlessly back onto the pieced together body. On March 20, 1978, exactly 585 years to the day after the historical Saint John of Nepomuk was martyred by being thrown off a bridge in Prague, the reconstructed statue was returned to this exact spot. It stands today as a testament to pure community resilience, a stubborn refusal to let a piece of heritage become a casualty of bad driving.
Now, let us walk to our final stop, where a hidden trench holds the oldest and darkest secret of the tour, moving on to the Sebastianbildstock in Unterlaa, which is a ten minute walk away. Take a moment to admire the seamless repair work before we move on.
