Pfarrkirche Puchberg am Schneeberg

The Catholic parish church of St Vitus stands in Puchberg am Schneeberg, a market town in the hills south of the Schneeberg massif. Built on the southern side of Burggasse, it belongs to the deanery of Neunkirchen within the vicariate under the Wienerwald of the Archdiocese of Vienna. First mentioned in 1264, the church became a parish in 1350 and passed under the vogtei of the Hoyos family in 1549. Damaged by fire in April 1945, it was rebuilt in 1948–49 to plans by Rudolf Sedlaczek and later restored in stages. The late-Gothic building has a taller choir and a lower nave with a western tower added later. The exterior shows stepped buttresses on the east and south, one dated 1526, while the tower from the late 15th century rises through four storeys to a renewed pointed roof. Inside, the 1948–49 reconstruction introduced a flat wooden ceiling and a wooden gallery, yet preserved a 1498 star-ribbed vault in the tower base. A large front painting of the legend of St Vitus by Hans Alexander Brunner from 1958 and abstract stained glass by Godi Hirschi from 2002 light the choir. Visitors enter through the late-Gothic west portal marked with the name Hoyos and find a spacious nave under a flat ceiling, a narrower choir under its own flat roof, and the tower base with its historic vaulting. The church contains an over-life-size crucifix from the third quarter of the 18th century, a Madonna statue from the late 19th century, and a 1955 tin relief Way of the Cross by Paul Ocsenasek. The organ, built in 1982, completes the interior.