Pfarrkirche hl. Martin, Sallingstadt

The Roman Catholic parish church of Sallingstadt stands at the southern edge of the village green in the small village of Sallingstadt, part of the Schweiggers market town in the Zwettl district of Lower Austria. It is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours and belongs to the Zwettl deanery in the Diocese of St Pölten. The church and its surrounding cemetery are listed as historic monuments. The parish was founded in the mid-14th century and a priest is recorded there in 1398. The present building began as a Romanesque east-tower church in the 13th century, with a late-Gothic rebuilding after a fire in 1427. From the mid-17th century until 1783 it served as a branch of the parish church at Großglobnitz, then became an independent parish once more under the authority of Zwettl Abbey. Outside, the church shows a plain 13th-century nave with a simple gable front and round-arched windows added in 1685. The sturdy square tower of the same period carries four coupled round-arched windows with leaf capitals beneath a low hipped roof. East of the tower is a rectangular choir, originally a 12th-century chapel, with a blocked Romanesque window and later round-arched windows. Inside, the two-aisled nave has ribbed vaulting on eight-sided piers, and fragments of a 15th-century apostles’ frieze survive on the west gallery. The high altar, installed in 1880, carries a painting of Saint Martin by Franz Maierhofer and statues of Saints Peter and Paul.