Pfarrkirche Kirchschlag

The Roman Catholic parish church of Kirchschlag stands on rising ground at the southern edge of the small town in the Zwettl district of Lower Austria. Dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Myra, it belongs to the deanery of Spitz within the diocese of St Pölten. The church and its surrounding cemetery are protected as historic monuments. The present building began as a Romanesque structure with a round apse built in the 13th century. A Gothic south tower was added in the early 15th century, and in 1756 the church was remodelled in the Baroque style, receiving its organ loft and sacristy. The tower’s square base rises to an octagonal Baroque upper section topped by a slender spire. Inside, a flat ceiling covers the nave while the organ loft is vaulted with a Platzl ceiling supported on two pillars. The round apse behind a wide round arch is roofed with a conch vault resting on late Romanesque impost blocks. The furnishings include a modern high altar and two side altars. The left side altar holds the tabernacle from the former high altar of about 1756, while the right side altar carries a notable polychrome figure of Christ as Saviour of the Sick, brought from the Trinitarian monastery in Madrid in the late 17th century. Baroque statues of Mary and Saint Anne date from the mid-18th century, and four figures of the Evangelists survive from an early 18th-century pulpit. A Gothic holy-water stoup carved in the 15th century and a set of bells cast around 1470 remain from earlier periods.