Saint Nicholas Church

The Roman Catholic parish church of Griesbach stands on a small rise at the western edge of the village of Griesbach, part of the town of Groß Gerungs in the Zwettl district of Lower Austria. Dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Myra, it belongs to the Zwettl deanery of the Diocese of St Pölten. Both the church and its surrounding cemetery are protected as historic monuments. The building’s origins go back to a chapel in the 13th century, first mentioned as a church in 1431. Between 1580 and 1650 it served as a Protestant place of worship before becoming a parish church in 1784. The core is late Romanesque, with a 14th-century Gothic rectangular choir and a late-Gothic north tower added in the 15th century. In 1797 the nave was given new vaulting, and in 1868 it was extended westward by two bays. The nave’s six bays are covered by transverse barrel vaults on wall pillars, while the nearly square choir, slightly raised, has a ribbed vault with a central keystone. The churchyard wall encloses the building and its graveyard. A plain south door with a shallow trefoil arch marks the simple nave, whose flat-arched windows date from 1793 and 1868. The tower on the north side of the choir contains a ground-floor ossuary and rises to a pavilion roof, its bell chamber lit by round-arched openings. A 20th-century porch shelters the west side of the tower. Inside, the high altar by Johann Weiss Söhne (1895) shows statues of Saints Nicholas, Leopold and Agnes, while the former high-altar painting of Saint Nicholas is by Martin Johann Schmidt (1797). The octagonal granite font combines parts from the 14th and 18th centuries, and Franz Jüstel’s 1869 gallery organ completes the furnishings.