Saint Giles Church

The Catholic parish church of St Ägydius stands on an open square at the north-west end of the village green in Paasdorf, a hamlet in Mistelbach district, Lower Austria. First recorded as a vicariate around 1285, it became a full parish in 1611. The present building began as a Gothic church in the 14th century, was enlarged in the 15th century, and then transformed into a Baroque interior in 1663–64. Since 1986 the fabric has been carefully restored to reveal earlier layers. The church is worth visiting for its layered history and the quality of its surviving features. The west tower, built in the 14th and 15th centuries, still shows its original quarry-stone facing and arrow-slit windows beneath an octagonal bell stage topped by a steep pyramid roof. Inside, the crossing vault and the early-Baroque barrel vault of the nave, completed in 1663, rest on pilasters with bold entablatures. The high altar, donated in 1770 by Count Perlas, carries an altarpiece by Bartolomeo Altomonte flanked by statues of Saints Peter and Paul, while the organ case dates from 1902. Visitors enter through a small Baroque porch on the south wall and find a single rectangular nave leading to a narrower, polygonal choir. The north and south walls of the nave each retain a small round window once lit the side altars of the 14th century. The Gothic windows in the choir have been reshaped in the Baroque period, and the blocked eastern window still shows its original tracery. The tower arch frames a view of the crossing vault, while the restored Gothic windows on the north side of the choir throw clear light onto the high altar.