Pfarrkirche Untertauern

The small Baroque parish church of St Josef stands in the village of Untertauern, a farming community in the Salzburg Alps. Built in 1743 by court building supervisor Johann Kleber, it was consecrated two years later. In 1891 it became the parish church, and later restorers added a small bell tower in 1962 and renewed the roof and walls in 1979. Inside, the single nave has three bays and a shallow barrel vault, while the one-bay choir is lit by a plaster mirror. A west gallery holds the organ, rebuilt by Louis Mooser in 1850 and enlarged in 1897. The high altar, designed by Peter Basler in 1840, combines a 1745 statue of St Joseph with a tabernacle moved from a dissolved church in Tamsweg, its doors painted by Johann Fuchs with rotating images of the four Evangelists. The side altars date from the 18th century and show scenes of the Holy Family and St John Nepomuk. The five-sided pulpit carries reliefs of Christ the Good Shepherd and the Evangelists beneath an 18th-century sounding board. A carved crucifix hangs above the nave, and the 1963 font sits beside two 18th-century grave slabs. Outside, the plain white walls and onion-domed bell tower give the church a quiet, rural presence among the alpine meadows.