Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (Arnfels)

The parish church of Arnfels stands in the market town of Arnfels in the Leibnitz district of Styria. It is a Roman Catholic church dedicated to the Nativity of Mary and belongs to the deanery of Leibnitz in the diocese of Graz-Seckau. The building is listed as a protected monument. The present church replaced an earlier structure built around the middle of the 15th century. Between 1714 and 1717 Gräfin Eleonore Dernbach and her second husband Franz Erwein von Schönborn commissioned a new church, which was consecrated in 1734. It became the parish church in 1788 after being a filial church of St Johann im Saggautal. The interior was restored in 1910 and the exterior in 1973. The church faces south and has a four-bay nave with engaged piers forming side chapels and upper-level galleries. The narrower choir, one and a half bays deep, ends in a three-sided apse with galleries in the north bay. Both nave and choir are covered by cross-ribbed vaults on flat pilasters with strong entablature capitals. The galleries have balustrades and the wall panels display foliage and ribbon-work stucco. The high altar, a massive columned structure filling the apse, was made by Johann Matthias Leitner in 1728.