Pfarrkirche hl. Johannes d. T., Haus im Ennstal

The Roman Catholic parish church of Saint John the Baptist stands in the market town of Haus, in the Liezen district of Styria. It belongs to the upper Enns valley and Ausseerland region within the Graz-Seckau diocese. The church and its adjoining cemetery are protected monuments, and the cemetery contains four small chapels marked with initials. To the north of the church stands the free-standing Katharinenkapelle.

The parish of Haus is the oldest in the upper Enns valley, with a church first mentioned in 1074. After a fire in 1750, the present building was erected in 1753 by Cassian Singer, a master builder from Kitzbühel. Later restorations took place in 1900 and 1971. The church’s four-bay nave has a barrel vault with lunettes, and the narrower single-bay choir ends in a three-sided apse. Inside, composite pilasters support the vaults, while the nave shows plain stucco panels and the choir is richly decorated in rococo style.

The high altar and two side altars were made around 1752 in the workshop of Balthasar Prandtstätter. Their elaborate decoration includes coloured stucco marble, gilded ornament and statues of putti and saints, painted in 1760 by Andreas Landschauer. The high altar’s central painting of the Baptism of Christ is by Johann Georg Kreutzer. The south chapel contains an 18th-century carved baldachin and a glass shrine with a Pietà. The pulpit of 1763, by a Salzburg sculptor, displays figures of the Church Fathers, Evangelists and Virtues. The organ dates from the late 18th century, and the coloured glass windows were made in 1906 by the Tyrolean glass-painting workshop.