Pfarrkirche Neuberg an der Mürz

The former Cistercian abbey church of Neuberg an der Mürz now serves as the parish church in the small market town of Neuberg an der Mürz in the Mürztal valley of Styria. The building stands beside the remains of the medieval monastery, to which it was once connected. A fire in 1396 damaged the partly built church, forcing a redesign that continued for more than a century. Emperor Frederick III gave the project decisive support, and the choir was completed in 1461 with an inscription recording his title and the date. The church is a nine-bay hall with three aisles, its light interior arranged in rectangular bays. A wider fourth bay acts as a kind of internal transept, marked by stronger piers and ribs. On the north side of the fifth bay stands a late-Gothic two-storey chapel with a spiral stair, built in the 15th century. The exterior shows stepped buttresses crowned with pinnacles, and the corners of both church and chapel are reinforced with diagonal buttresses. Inside, the richly gilded high altar of 1611–12 is one of the first major Baroque altars in Styria. It was made by the sculptor Hans Georg Mader from Überlingen with assistants from Ulm and the region. The organ case is early Rococo, housing a 1971 instrument of 29 stops. Three historic bells hang in the tower: one from 1446, another from 1526, and the third from 1730. The church and its former monastic buildings form part of the valley’s cultural landscape.