Pfarrkirche Leoben

The Catholic parish church of St John of Nepomuk stands beside the Lieser river in the village of Leoben, part of Krems in Carinthia. A simple whitewashed building with a low-pitched roof and small west tower, it was raised between 1752 and 1766 and consecrated in 1766. The church and its walled cemetery form a protected monument. Inside, the two-bay nave and chancel are covered by barrel vaults with small round-arched windows. A musicians’ gallery on columns overlooks the entrance. The high altar and two side altars, all from 1763, survive in their original colours. A late-Gothic Pietà carved in Villach around 1515 and a mid-18th-century figure of the Man of Sorrows stand on the rood screen. The cemetery walls hold four Biedermeier gravestones from the early 19th century. A painted Eye of God hangs above the west gate, while the east gate is flanked by a wayside shrine that once housed the same 16th-century Vesperbild now in Klagenfurt’s diocesan museum. The churchyard and the adjoining rectory sit directly on the riverbank, framed by the Lieser’s quiet valley.