Pfarrkirche St Stefan im Lavanttal

St Stephen’s parish church stands in the village of St Stefan in the Lavant valley, part of Wolfsberg municipality in Carinthia. A chapel is recorded there between 1106 and 1139, and the place became a parish in 1964 after earlier changes in 1953. The parish also includes the smaller church at Rieding. The late-Gothic building dates from about 1500. In 1962 the north side was extended and the west end lengthened, moving the original west portal into the new work. A sacristy projects from the south wall and a square tower rises at the north-east corner, topped by a steep pyramid roof. Inside, a three-bay nave carries a net-ribbed vault on round shafts, while the flat-roofed north aisle opens through arcades. The windows were renewed in 1962. A richly moulded pointed arch links nave and single-bay choir, which ends in five sides of an octagon and is vaulted in the same manner. The ribs meet at painted roundels and the choir retains its late-Gothic tracery windows. A shoulder-headed door with an iron-bound leaf leads down to the tower basement, where a Roman inscription names local people called Quartinus, Messia, Saxxu and Secundinus. The high altar, made about 1700, carries a late-15th-century statue of St Stephen and a Baroque painting of St John of Nepomuk above. A side altar of about 1710–20 holds a Madonna figure from the same period. The pulpit from the early 18th century now serves as the lectern. Two large oil paintings hang in the church: one shows the stoning of St Stephen from the 17th century, the other the transfiguration of St Lawrence from the mid-18th century. A carved relief of the Agony in the Garden belongs to the late 15th century. Alois Progar carved the statues of St Stephen and St Lawrence for the former high altar in 1889–90. There are also console figures of St Sebastian and St Christopher from about 1500, and of St Joachim and St Anne from the first half of the 18th century.