Pfarrkirche St Margarethen im Lavanttal

The parish church of St Margarethen im Lavanttal stands in the centre of the village on the main road through St Margarethen in the town of Wolfsberg, Carinthia. It belongs to the deanery of Wolfsberg in the diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt and has been protected as a listed building since the 13th century. The present late-Gothic structure was completed in 1530 after earlier work had begun. The church is built with two-tiered buttresses along the nave and three-tiered buttresses on the choir, all set at angles in the middle. A west tower rises from the entrance bay, its belfry windows showing two-light Gothic tracery and topped by a 19th-century spire. Inside, the nave is divided into three bays under a net-ribbed vault on round shafts with octagonal capitals from the late 15th century. The choir vault is similarly ribbed and dated 1530 at the eastern rib junction. Visitors enter through the Gothic west door and pass under the west gallery into a rib-vaulted porch opened by three arches. The high altar of the 1730s carries statues by Franz Anton Detl around 1750, including a central figure of St Margaret with the dragon. The left side altar holds a radiant Madonna between St Dominic and St Catherine of Siena, while the right side altar shows St Andrew with flanking figures of St Christopher and St Sebastian. The pulpit of the 1730s is decorated with garlands and a gilded figure of a saint on the sounding board. A large side-chapel crucifix is flanked by figures of the Virgin and St John, and a late-Gothic figure of St Margaret from about 1410 stands on a console in the choir.