Chiesa di San Giorgio (Maia Alta)

On the vineyard slopes of Maia Alta, the parish church of St. George combines Gothic architecture with Baroque interiors and painted ceilings depicting the rural landscape of Mais.

Why it matters

A deed of 1256 records Countess Adelheid of Tyrol granting wine from a vineyard at “St. Georgen am Rain” to the abbey of Herrenchiemsee. The church served as an outlying chapel of the parish of Mais for much of the Middle Ages and became the parish church of Obermais in 1969. Protected as a monument since 1980, it has served the Maia Alta slope for centuries.

What to notice

The church has a single nave, a tower whose lower storeys may belong to its Romanesque predecessor, and a slender Gothic spire. Josef Wengenmayr’s 1765 frescoes cover the walls and ceiling; the large ceiling scene depicts the eighteenth-century landscape of Mais, including churches, castles and farmsteads. A fresco of the Annunciation with a unicorn hunt was concealed behind a rendered wall and rediscovered during renovation in 1988. The left aisle, added around 1620, contains the Rosenberg family burial chapel, with gravestones, a cavalry pennant and the family arms.

Context and history

The church's fortunes rose with its patrons. In 1272 the counts of Tyrol handed the parish of Mais and its filials to the abbey of Stams as endowment property, a gift that provoked repeated disputes with the bishops of Trent. A Gothic rebuilding was consecrated on 1 May 1490; around 1620 Johann Eckhardt von Rosenberg, lord of Winkl and Knillenberg, chose the church for his family tomb and financed the left aisle, and the family connection lasted until Rosa von Rosenberg's death in 1773. The eighteenth century brought baroqueisation — Gothic vault ribs were stripped out — before a chaplaincy in 1734 and a curacy in 1895 restored the church's independence step by step. In 1914 the nave and left aisle were extended westward by one bay, and architect Anton Pardatscher designed a new right aisle.