Silent Night Chapel

On Christmas Eve 1818 in the church of St Nicholas at Oberndorf, the assistant priest Joseph Mohr gave a poem he had written two years earlier to the schoolmaster and organist Franz Xaver Gruber, who set it for two voices and guitar, and Stille Nacht was sung that night. The church itself is gone - the Salzach flooded repeatedly through the nineteenth century and the building was damaged beyond saving and demolished, with the village rebuilt on higher ground - and the octagonal Silent Night chapel was put up on the site between 1924 and 1937 as a memorial. It is small and takes minutes. A museum next door covers the song, Mohr and Gruber, and the flooding. On 24 December a service is held at five in the afternoon and thousands come.

History

The carol was first sung on 24 December 1818 in the church of St. Nicholas that stood here, but the Salzach flooded the church several times in the 1890s, and after the flood of 1899 wrecked much of Oberndorf the town was rebuilt about 800 metres upstream. The damaged church was not repaired but replaced in 1906 by a new one in the new town centre, and the old one was pulled down in 1913, leaving only a mound of rubble; the hundredth anniversary of the song in December 1918 moved townspeople to plan a memorial, building began in 1924, slowed by the hard years of the First Republic, and the chapel was finished on 15 August 1937, the Feast of the Assumption (Wikipedia, Silent Night Chapel).

What you'll find

• An octagonal memorial chapel - built 1924 to 1937 on the site of the lost church.
• The site of the first performance - where Stille Nacht was sung in 1818.
• A museum next door - Mohr, Gruber, the song and the floods that took the church.
• The Christmas Eve service - held at five in the afternoon, drawing thousands.

When to go

All year; 24 December for the service, if you can face the crowd. An hour.

Before you go

The original church no longer exists - this is a 1930s memorial. The chapel is tiny and holds very few people. The Christmas Eve service is standing room in the open, in the cold.

Nearby

Laufen is across the river in Germany; Salzburg is half an hour south.

Key facts