Pfarrkirche St. Valentin, Glainach

The Catholic parish church of St. Valentin stands in Glainach, a village within the town of Ferlach in southern Austria’s Carinthia region. Built on a gentle rise, it overlooks fields and wooded hills that stretch towards the Karawanken mountains. The churchyard surrounds the building, its low walls separating it from quiet lanes and farm tracks. The church began as a Gothic structure around 1400 and was later enlarged in the 18th and 19th centuries. A single bell cast in 1479 still rings from the tower, while a 1526 fresco above the cemetery gate shows a crucifixion flanked by two bishop saints. Inside, the high altar of 1826 holds statues of St. Valentin, Urban and Ulrich, and the sacristy wall preserves a 15th-century fresco of the Crucifixion framed by painted architecture. Visitors enter through the west front added in 1858 and step into a four-bay nave covered by ribbed vaults. The south chapel opens off the nave through a round-arched arcade, its barrel vault decorated with lunettes. The polygonal choir at the east end carries a late-Gothic ribbed vault on slender shafts, its stained glass renewed in 1970 and 1971. Late-Gothic wall paintings depict the Adoration of the Magi and Apostle crosses, while the sacrament niche holds a delicate rosette grille from the same period.