Margarethakirche Tschrietes

The small hilltop church of St Margaret in Tschrietes stands on the Saualpe ridge in the southern Austrian Alps. It overlooks a scattered settlement first recorded in 1245, where the church itself appears in documents from 1371. The building is surrounded by a cemetery wall that contains a blocked Gothic pointed arch, a relic from its earliest years. A modest nave and narrower chancel were given a plastered wooden barrel vault in 1887, while the sturdy west tower still shows its original Gothic twin bell-openings beneath a steep slate roof.

Inside, the mid-17th-century high altar carries carved figures: a late Gothic Madonna, St Margaret and St Stephen from about 1520, and at the top two further saints. Two side altars date from 1720, one housing a late medieval St Sebastian, the other a figure of St Roch from the following century. A pair of superimposed predellas from 1547 combine four Passion panels with a painted frieze of the Fifteen Helpers and the Veil of Veronica. The Passion scenes depict the Last Supper, the Crowning with Thorns, the Scourging and Christ in Gethsemane, while a narrow wing shows St Christopher.

The church’s exterior walls preserve traces of earlier times. A fragment of a Roman gravestone is set into the north wall, and the south portal still wears its original Gothic mouldings and small porch. The tower’s twin openings and the cemetery’s blocked arch recall the building’s medieval origins, while the 19th-century altarpiece with the Slaughter of the Innocents adds a later layer of history.