Pfarrkirche Mariä Himmelfahrt Pfaffenhofen

The parish church of Pfaffenhofen stands on the village square in the heart of the Tyrolean community. It overlooks the western end of the settlement above the remains of an early Christian church. A cemetery surrounds the building, and to the north lie the traces of a row of graves from the 7th and 8th centuries. The church has passed through three main building phases. The first was a small 5th-century church with an off-centre layout and a free-standing semicircular priest’s bench. The second, around 700, added a rectangular nave with an eastern apse and two burials, one richly furnished. The present structure began as a Gothic church in the 14th century, was later extended and repaired, and finally transformed into a neo-Gothic design between 1860 and 1863 by August Essenwein and Josef Vonstadl. Outside, the stripped plaster reveals Gothic detailing such as pointed-arch windows and a continuous hollow-chamfered cornice. A tall, slender spire rises above the square tower, and the south wall of the sacristy carries a large fresco of the Resurrection and Last Judgement by Leopold Puellacher. Inside, the five-bay nave leads to a slightly offset choir, its walls lined with pilasters and its vault divided by transverse ribs. The high altar, carved in the 1960s by the Elbigenalp woodcarving school, holds a 1776 Madonna surrounded by fifteen small rosary scenes.