Maria Hietzing

Maria Hietzing is a Roman Catholic parish and pilgrimage church in Vienna’s Hietzing district. Dedicated to the Nativity of Mary, it stands within the Schönbrunn Palace and Park UNESCO World Heritage buffer zone and has monument protection. The church occupies a site near the mouth of the Lainzerbach stream, where a Marian chapel stood in the thirteenth century. Repeated destruction by raids and sieges shaped the building’s long history.

Inside, baroque furnishings connect the church to its pilgrimage tradition and local legends. Matthias Steinl created the high altar in 1698, showing Mary above men supposedly rescued from the Turks after praying to her. Gilded figures of Joachim, Anna, Elizabeth and Zacharias surround the scene, while an Austrian double-headed eagle crowns the ensemble. Frescoes by Antoni Galliardi cover the nave with scenes from Mary’s life, including her coronation, assumption, death and burial.

The Leopold Chapel contains a painting of Saint Leopold holding the church’s plan on Leopoldsberg. A 1733 chapel for Saint John Nepomuk allowed pilgrims to attend Mass outdoors in large numbers. The white Danube limestone altar, ambo, baptismal font and resurrection cross come from Wolfgang Stracke. Johann M. Kauffmann’s 1903 organ has eighteen registers across two manuals and a pedal, while the accessible church also recalls a 1708 proxy imperial wedding.