Nofels

Nofels is one of seven districts of Feldkirch in the Rhine valley where the Ill meets the Rhein at the Illspitz. The district stretches from the Schellenberg hill down to the river flats, covering the largest area of all parts of the city. Three small hamlets belong to it: Fresch on the Schellenberg near Liechtenstein, Bangs at Austria’s westernmost point by the Swiss border, and the abandoned Matschels, now a nature reserve. The village began in the 11th century as a Roman land-clearing called Novale, later Germanised to Nofels. Records from 1290 show payments to Mehrerau Abbey, and in 1314 a man named Ulrich ‘the Nofler’ sold a meadow. Floods and disputes over common land marked centuries of life here until the 18th century, when dykes and legal rulings brought change. A sulphur spa opened in 1514, drawing visitors until the spring dried up in the 19th century; today’s Kneipp house stands on the same site. Visitors walk past the old parish church built in 1726 with funds from Magdalena Maria Humlin, its tower raised in 1865. The modern parish church of Maria Heimsuchung, consecrated in 1962, has a concrete frame and large windows. Between the two churches lie quiet streets lined with houses that replaced the old farmsteads. Beyond the village, the protected meadows of Bangs-Matschels offer paths through rare orchids and wetland birds, a reminder of the wild land that once stretched between hill and river.