Konzilspfarrkirche St. Paul

St Paul’s is a modern Roman Catholic parish church with a parish centre in Salzburg’s Riedenburg district. The building stands on the corner of Nußdorferstraße, where a 19th-century house now forms part of the kindergarten. A long sequence of linked volumes leads to a tall bell tower topped by a glass pyramid. The church is worth seeing for its carefully planned geometry and the art inside. Architects Erio Hofmann and Adalbert Rothenthal arranged the spaces around a square central hall lit by a continuous clerestory band. The altar wall carries a five-part fresco by Hubert Schmalix titled The Way of Paul, which tells the apostle’s story from left to right. Inside, the square hall has a steeply sloping roof whose glulam ribs fan out like a tent. Bronze heads line the altar platform, twelve for the tribes of Israel and the apostles, five smaller ones on the ambo for Paul and the four Evangelists. Richard Hirschbäck’s glass portals and windows use circles, squares and triangles in warm and cool hues, while Hartwig Mülleitner’s weekday-chapel altar is carved from a pine root with a serpentine stone cross.