The typical and, one may suppose, the preferred stylistic vehicle of most Viennese architects in these decades was, indeed, a rather rich High Renaissance mode. This, for example, Hansen used very effectively for the Palace of Archduke Eugene of 1865-7 and for the Palais Epstein at 1 Parlamentsring of 1870-3. He and Förster, and after Förster’s death Hansen alone, as well as many other architects, employed this mode ubiquitously for various big blocks of flats along the Ring and elsewhere (Plate 74). Good examples are such new hotels of the period as the former Britannia, still standing in the Schillerplatz, and the Donau, which once rose opposite the North Station. Both are by Heinrich Claus (1835-?) and Josef Grosz (1828-?) and were built in the early seventies. Their rather Barryesque raised end-pavilions, without mansards, and the heavily sumptuous detailing of the façades are most characteristic. The better known Sacher’s Hotel behind the Opera House, built by W. Fraenkel in 1876, is somewhat smaller and less lush, at least externally. The block at 8 Operngasse, built by Ehrmann in the early sixties, was topped with Parisian mansards, as are also the long blocks in the Reichstrasse behind the Parlament and the University on either side of the Rathaus; these also have open arcades at their base somewhat like those in Turin. As along the boulevards of Paris, there is a considerable homogeneity in the private architecture that lines the Ring and the many squares and streets that were built up at the same time. Only in the design of public monuments—often by much the same architects, it is worth noting—did a pompous and somewhat retardataire eclecticism rule. Consider the major works of Ferstel: his bank is _Rundbogenstil_; his Votivkirche of 1856-79 is Gothic; his University something else again. Ferstel’s Gothic must be compared, not with the distinctly original High Victorian churches of its period in England (see Chapter 10), but with Gau’s earlier Sainte-Clotilde in Paris (see Chapter 6): it is certainly a considerable improvement over that in the general justness of the scale and the plausible laciness of the fourteenth-century detail. But in English terms the Votivkirche is still Early rather than High Victorian. The painted decoration by J. Führich and others, somewhat more discreet than that in the chief _Rundbogenstil_ churches of Vienna, relieves effectively the coldness usual in these big Continental examples of Neo-Gothic.