Vecchia Parrocchiale di Gries (altare di Michael Pacher)

In the old Gries quarter, away from Bolzano's arcades, a modest Gothic church guards a winged altarpiece regarded as a masterpiece of late Gothic art. Michael Pacher's Coronation of the Virgin, made between 1471 and 1475, waits in a side chapel beside the abbey.

Why it matters

Michael Pacher shaped the altarpiece at the transition from Gothic carving to the Renaissance; the work he made for the old parish church of Gries between 1471 and 1475 is among the achievements on which his reputation rests. The altar, centred on the Coronation of the Virgin, was executed for this church when Gries was still a rural parish outside Bolzano, and it has never left the building. That continuity matters: unlike the late-Gothic masterpieces gathered into museums, this one is seen in the light, silence and acoustic it was made for, in a church that retains its medieval frame, its Romanesque crucifix and its historic graveyard. The altar is ranked among the highest achievements of Gothic sculptural art; its carving, paint and composition are exceptionally well preserved.

What to notice

The altarpiece now stands in the chapel of St Erasmus, built in 1519 in the south wing of the choir, where it was moved after the Baroque period replaced it at the high altar with a new furnishing. The winged structure brings painting and sculpture together. Its central Coronation of the Virgin groups carved figures with richly detailed draperies, faces and gilding, while the painted surfaces display the colour range of Pacher's workshop. The Romanesque wooden crucifix known as the Hepperger crucifix is thought to come from thirteenth-century France, predating the church itself. The churchyard, used for burials until 1922, contains a memorial to Bernhard von Wüllerstorf-Urbair, the Austro-Hungarian vice admiral who commanded the Novara on its circumnavigation of the globe.

Context and history

The church was erected in the early fifteenth century in the late Gothic manner and consecrated to Our Lady, serving as the parish church of Gries, then a settlement with Roman-era roots known as Chellare, for the following centuries. Its role changed in 1788, when the parish passed to the great abbey complex across the square and the collegiate church of Muri-Gries took over the parochial life of the district. The old church kept its altarpiece, and its fortunes turned on recognition: the Pacher altar survived the Baroque rearrangement, was returned to view in the St Erasmus chapel, and since 1977 the building has enjoyed official artistic protection. The quarter around it preserves the frame: the abbey with its Baroque collegiate church and the parish cemetery complete a group of medieval and early modern buildings that reads as a village centre absorbed into the city. In the church's story, Bolzano's wider history is visible in miniature — a rural foundation, a monastic takeover, a heritage listing.