St. Stephan

The parish church of Rieggers stands on a slight rise at the edge of the village green in the small village of Rieggers, part of Zwettl in Lower Austria. It belongs to the Zwettl deanery in the diocese of St Pölten and is dedicated to Saint Stephen. The church has been under official protection since the 19th century.

Rieggers was already a vicariate in the 13th century and became a parish at the end of the 15th. The original Romanesque church was rebuilt in the 15th century and then given Baroque touches in the late 18th. A Romanesque ossuary nearby was removed in the late 18th century. Between 2003 and 2006 the whole building was carefully restored.

The churchyard still surrounds the building. The nave’s core is Romanesque, its round-arched windows added in the late 18th century. On the north side Romanesque windows survive, along with a massive buttress from the 15th century. The tall Romanesque tower on the east side carries an 18th-century round-arched window and a 19th-century pointed spire. Inside, the Gothic choir from the early 14th century has polygonal ends, flying buttresses and renewed pointed windows. The sacristy to the south was once a chapel and the old sacristy now serves as a porch. A chapel on the north side dates from the late 18th century.