Grieskirchen Parish Church

The parish church of Grieskirchen stands on the town square in the small town of Grieskirchen in Upper Austria. It is a Roman Catholic church dedicated to Saint Martin, part of the Kallham deanery in the Diocese of Linz. The building is protected as a historic monument. The church’s history goes back to 1075, when it was first mentioned in writing. After a major Baroque expansion around 1701–1702 only the nave walls with their pointed arches survived from the earlier Gothic structure. The west tower wears a Baroque spire added in 1909. Side entrances and a confession chapel were built in 1901 and 1910–1911. Inside, the three-aisled nave has barrel vaulting, while the square crossing and two-bay choir carry ribbed vaults. Visitors find a neobaroque high altar from 1874 and side altars by Matthias Götz from 1766. A late-Gothic statue of the Virgin and Child, carved around 1500, stands in the church. The choir holds Renaissance tombstones for local nobles, including Hans Adam Orth from 1585 and Sigismund Polheim from 1598. The 1858 Breinbauer organ was rebuilt in 1934 and again in 1989. South of the church, the late-Gothic Sebastian Chapel has a ribbed vault and a neogothic interior, with a 1713 ex-voto painting of the town.