Pfarrkirche hl. Maximilian, Pernegg

The Catholic parish church of St Maximilian stands on a hill above the village of Kirchdorf in the municipality of Pernegg an der Mur. The church belongs to the Bruck an der Mur deanery in the diocese of Graz-Seckau and is protected as a listed monument. A church is recorded here as early as 1125. The exterior shows stepped buttresses and tracery windows on the nave and choir. A round stair-tower rises beside the south wall of the nave. The west door bears the name of Master Jakob Belant and the date 1556. The powerful late-Gothic tower, with its keeled roof, stands north of the choir. Inside, the nave has a Romanesque core under a Gothic net-ribbed vault with parallel ribs on half-circular shafts and round keystones. A remarkable three-bay net-ribbed west gallery, probably from 1556, rests on octagonal piers. A Rococo gallery, projecting in the centre, was added in the third quarter of the 18th century. The choir, from the 14th century, is slightly shifted southward and finishes in a five-sided apse with ribbed vaulting. Two Gothic sacrament houses and a pointed sacristy door survive here. Frescoes in the nave depict the Virgin and Child enthroned with saints and the Virgin of Mercy, dated about 1482. The high altar, with white-painted statues, dates from around 1770–80 and carries a painting of St Maximilian and an upper picture of the Holy Trinity.