Hl. Johannes der Täufer, Aigen im Ennstal

The Johanneskapelle is a small Roman Catholic church on a spur of the Kulmberg in Hohenberg, a village in the Ennstal valley of Styria. It is a branch church of the parish church at Irdning and has stood under Denkmalschutz since the 19th century. The chapel crowns a site that once held a prehistoric hilltop settlement of the Hallstatt period. The building’s first written record dates from 1171, though its present form shows layers from the 12th to the 18th century. A late 13th-century Gothic remodelling added pointed windows, and around 1500 a polygonal choir and sacristy were inserted. The baroque onion dome on the ridge turret was added in the early 1700s. Inside, the nave still shows its original flat ceiling and two high round-arched windows, while the choir is vaulted with late-gothic ribbed work. Visitors enter through a Gothic west portal and step into a single rectangular space lit by the old windows. A plain stone chancel arch leads to the raised choir, where a late-gothic winged altar by Lienhart Astl of Gmunden stands. The carved shrine holds a Madonna and Child flanked by John the Baptist and the Evangelist John, and the predella depicts the carrying of the cross. The wings display painted scenes of female saints and the martyrdom of John the Baptist.