Saint Michael Church

The parish church of St Michael stands in the village core of Sankt Michael in the upper Mur valley, a quiet market town in the Leoben district of Styria. Built for the Erzengel Michael, it belongs to the eastern Upper Styria deanery under Graz-Seckau diocese and both church and cemetery are listed monuments. A church here is first recorded in 925, long before the Turkish raid of 1480 reduced it to ruins. The present building mixes medieval and baroque elements. The 17th-century tower rises above the eastern choir, while the 18th-century nave extension added a side chapel and round west window. Inside, a flat ceiling spans the nave, the two-bay choir has a ribbed vault with round keystones, and Gothic wall paintings from the early 1300s were uncovered in 1947. The painted altarpieces of Saints Florian and Sebastian date from 1784, and the abbot’s baroque coat of arms sits above the rood beam. Visitors find a newly arranged sanctuary with a modern altar and ambo, a north chapel housing an 18th-century Marian altar and a late-17th-century painting of the Coronation of Mary. A late-medieval octagonal font and a baroque pulpit from the first half of the 18th century stand nearby. Four large canvases of the Church Fathers by Gottfried Bernhard Götz were moved here from Admont abbey. The 1848 Hörbiger organ was restored in 2001, and the churchyard contains monuments to a 19th-century priest and a skirmish with French troops in 1809.