Former Katharinenkirche, Frohnleiten

The Katharinenkirche stands in Frohnleiten, a town in the Steiermark region of Austria. It began as a small chapel around 1300 when Frohnleiten became a market town. The choir was added about 100 years later, in the early 15th century. A fire in 1763 damaged the building, so it was rebuilt before being secularised in 1788. Today only the detached bell tower remains under church ownership, while the rest belongs to the town. The church is worth visiting for its early Gothic architecture and the unusual shape of its tower. The tower has a five-sided lower section and a hexagonal upper part topped with a 17th-century onion dome and lantern. The choir still shows its five-sided closure and stepped buttresses, a clear sign of its medieval design. After a fire and later secularisation, the building served as housing before being restored in two phases. In 2012 and 2013 the façade and a dangerous connecting structure were repaired at a cost of hundreds of thousands of euros. Visitors find the surviving parts of the church standing beside the main parish church in Frohnleiten. The detached tower dominates the skyline with its distinctive onion dome and lantern. Inside the former nave, now empty after the 2012 demolition of unsafe additions, the Gothic choir remains clearly visible. The surrounding streets and the nearby parish church create a quiet corner in the centre of town. The site shows how a medieval building was adapted over centuries before being brought back to light.