Wallfahrtskirche Dornau

The Wallfahrtskirche Dornau stands in the Dornau valley, a quiet clearing in the hills of Lower Austria. It belongs to the parish of Altenmarkt an der Triesting and lies beside the Via sacra, the old pilgrim route from Vienna to Mariazell in Styria. Four travellers from Vienna set up a stone statue of the Suffering Saviour in 1637, and this became a stopping point on the pilgrimage path. In 1764 Abbot Jakob Pach of Klein-Mariazell built a wooden chapel here, followed by a stone church in 1766. The building was enlarged in 1773 and made a local parish by Emperor Joseph II in 1782, though it later became a filial church of Altenmarkt. Inside, the late-baroque church has a domed nave and twin towers on its façade. Two rooms under pendentive domes are richly painted by artists from the school of Paul Troger, including Johann Bergl, Josef Ignaz Mildorfer and Johann Jakob Zeiller. The first dome shows the Adoration of the Lamb, the second the Last Judgement. At the east end God the Father sits on clouds surrounded by angels. The pulpit dates from about 1770, the side altars from the mid-19th century, and the organ was built in 1857 by Josef Loyp of Vienna. East of the church stands the Scheder memorial, a column bearing statues of Saints Leonhard, Ferdinand, Sebastian and the Virgin. It was raised in 1850 to honour Ferdinand Scheder, a soldier born in 1824 who won the gold medal for bravery at the battle of Szolnok in January 1849 and died a month later. The valley around the church is a peaceful place for quiet walks, with the pilgrim path still passing through the woods and meadows.