Pfarrkirche Mariä Himmelfahrt, Lochen am See

The Pfarrkirche Lochen am See stands beside the lake in the village of Lochen, part of the municipality of Lochen am See in Upper Austria. A Roman Catholic parish church dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, it belongs to the Mattighofen deanery in the Diocese of Linz. Both the church and its surrounding cemetery are protected as historic monuments.

The church first appears in records from 1143, when it belonged to the Bishopric of Passau. After the 1779 Treaty of Teschen transferred the Innviertel region from Bavaria to Austria, Lochen moved to the Diocese of Linz in 1785. Built with three altars in honour of the Virgin’s Ascension, it was repeatedly altered between the 13th and 15th centuries and later given a Baroque makeover. Lightning struck the tower in the 19th century, requiring a new bell stage and spire. A second fire in 1988 destroyed the tower again, and the most recent restoration finished in 1992.

Inside, the single-nave Gothic core is supported by external buttresses. A west tower houses the bells, while a south aisle contains a Gothic porch, sacristy and the Chapel of St Anne. The heavy oak door carries a wrought-iron grille and a richly carved Gothic portal whose gable painting, from the early 1700s, shows Christ driving the moneylenders from the Temple. The Annakapelle, also remodelled in the Baroque style, displays a ceiling fresco of the Holy Kinship dated 1830 and an altar dedicated to St Anne teaching the young Virgin to read, flanked by statues of St Roch and St Sebastian. The nave is divided by wall shafts with Baroque capitals, leading to a two-bay choir. The two-storey gallery preserves its late-Gothic lower level beneath a later organ loft. Wilhelm Hauschild’s ceiling paintings depict the Assumption of Mary in the choir and the martyrdom of St Bartholomew in the nave. The high altar of 1709, attributed to Meinrad Guggenbichler, shows the Virgin and Child enthroned on clouds, surrounded by figures of St George, St Florian, St Barbara and St Catherine, with St Bartholomew at the centre flanked by St Roch and St Sebastian, crowned by the Eye of God.