Pfarrkirche Waidendorf

The Catholic parish church of St Ulrich stands on a rise above the village of Waidendorf in the Marchfeld, a broad plain in eastern Lower Austria. It belongs to the deanery of Zistersdorf and has been protected as a listed monument since the 20th century. The church occupies the site of an earlier parish first recorded in 1300 and rebuilt in 1784. Its architecture tells a long story in stone. The nave dates from the 13th century, the polygonal choir from the early 1300s. In the late 1600s the building was given a Baroque vault and new windows, while the west tower received its onion dome. Inside, the three-bay nave is covered by a barrel vault with lunettes, supported on sturdy Baroque pillars. The two-bay choir ends in a shallow arch, and both sacristies preserve their original Gothic and early-19th-century vaults. The church walls hold fragments of medieval frescoes arranged in horizontal bands. The north choir wall shows scenes from the Passion, including the Agony in the Garden and the Crucifixion. The Baroque furnishings include a high altar of the 1720s with a statue of St Ulrich beneath a canopy, a pulpit carved with the Four Fathers of the Church, and a 17th-century font topped by a group of the Baptism of Christ. Outside, a Biedermeier gravestone from 1828 marks the former cemetery.