The largest Faculty at the University of Vienna

Research and teaching at the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies deal with the social and cultural performance of human beings in variable historical contexts, and focus on language, literature, and music.

The courses taught at faculty provide a diversity that is unique within Austria and rare within Europe: many of its study programms are not offered at any other Austrian university, and few European universities boast a comparable range. Good examples of such unique programmes come from areas such as Theatre, Film and Media Studies, Finnish Studies, Hungarian Studies, Dutch Studies, Scandinavian Studies, Bulgarian Studies, Romanian Studies, Slovakian Studies, Ukrainian Studies, African Studies, Arab Studies, Turkish Studies, Islamic Studies, Oriental Studies, South-Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, Korean Studies, Japanese Studies, or Chinese studies.

The patron saint of the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies is St. Catherine. A figure of St. Catherine is shown in the picture on the left. It is made of gold-plated silver and adorns the top end of the ceremonial sceptre of the former Philosophical Faculty. The sceptre was made in 1666 and is still used at formal ceremonies.