Maria Worth

Maria Wörth occupies a promontory reaching into the Wörthersee that was an island until the lake level was lowered, and two churches stand on it. The parish church, the larger, is Gothic over an eleventh-century Romanesque crypt holding the relics of the martyrs Primus and Felician, with a baroque high altar and a churchyard ringed by an old wall. The smaller Winterkirche, the winter church, is Romanesque with a fresco of the apostles from around 1100 and was used in cold months because it could be heated. A round charnel house stands beside them. The whole group on its wooded point above the water is the image the Wörthersee is sold on, and the churches are among the most booked wedding venues in Austria, which affects when you can get in.

History

A first church of St Mary was built here around 875, as the bishops of Freising, working from Innichen Abbey, brought Christianity to Carantania; an 894 deed calls it Maria Werd, because the site was then an island - Wörth in Old High German, like the Slovene Otok, means land surrounded by water. The relics of Saints Primus and Felician were brought to the church, which played an important part in the Christian mission in Carinthia. Around 1150 Bishop Otto of Freising founded a college of canons here and had the small Winterkirche built beside the collegiate church; fire struck both churches in 1399, and they were rebuilt in the present late Gothic style. About 1500 the college became an annex of Millstatt Abbey, run from 1598 by the Jesuits, and after the Jesuit order was suppressed in 1773 Maria Wörth passed in 1809 to St Paul's Abbey in the Lavanttal (Wikipedia, Maria Wörth).

What you'll find

• A church promontory - a former island reaching into the Wörthersee.
• A Romanesque crypt - eleventh-century, under the Gothic parish church.
• The Winterkirche fresco - apostles painted around 1100 in the smaller church.
• A round charnel house - the ossuary standing beside the two churches.

When to go

May to September; weekdays to avoid weddings. Half a day.

Before you go

Weddings close the churches for long stretches at weekends in summer. Parking on the promontory is very limited. The village is small and crowded in season.

Nearby

Velden and Pörtschach are around the lake; Klagenfurt is east.