20-30 million of years ago, this quarry was part of the seabed. The limestone rocks contain a wealth of marine fossils. If you are lucky, you will find prehistoric mussels, corals, sea urchins and coralline algae. The limestone from the quarry was used for building St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and the grandest buildings along the Vienna‘s Ringstraße. The colours and shapes of the rocks appear to change, according to where the sun is shining.

Ever since 1996, the St. Margarethen Quarry has been a favourite meeting place for international opera lovers. This open-air stage in beautiful Burgenland (65 km southeast of Vienna) provides a natural forum for bringing together cultures and people from East and West.

Set in the midst of a historic landscape, this venue will transport you to a world of new, unique experiences. By providing first-rate facilities for staging popular and top quality opera productions, their festival has succeeded in attracting enthusiastic audiences as well as international opera stars and musicians.

One of Europe’s most beautiful and impressive open-air arenas, operas have been performed at St. Margarethen Quarry since 1996. With the Esterházy Foundation as its owner, this location was redeveloped in 2006. AWG, a young, international architects group from Vienna, designed exciting architecture that was also sensitively attuned to the setting, a space that had actually been an industrial site for many centuries.