Pfarrkirche St. Mang

The Pfarrkirche St. Mang stands above the Lech in Füssen, directly beneath the castle hill of the Hohes Schloss. It began as the church of the Benedictine abbey of St. Mang. Secularisation came in 1802, and the town's Catholics made it their parish church. A stretch of the old town wall climbs from its west choir to the castle, and Magnusplatz opens before the north entrance.

Legend has Saint Magnus building the first chapel on this spot in the eighth century. Monks settled here around 800, and an eleventh-century basilica followed, its outer walls still preserved in the crypt. Damage from the Thirty Years' War prompted a rebuild: Johann Jakob Herkomer began the present baroque church in 1701. He died in 1717, the year of its consecration, and his nephew Johann Georg Fischer completed the interior by 1726. The design looks to Italian early baroque, above all Santa Giustina in Padua. Six pendentive domes span nave, transept and choir, and large thermal windows pour daylight onto Herkomer's stucco. Franz Georg Hermann painted most of the frescoes, with scenes from Saint Magnus's life across the nave ceiling.

The double-sided high altar combines several colours of Füssen marble, with larger-than-life saints by Anton Sturm alongside. Above the people's altar an acrylic cross holds relics of Saint Magnus, among them his staff. It surfaced in a grave beneath the high altar in the fifteenth century and long served to bless local fields. Two dragon-shaped candelabras from 1724 by Thomas Seitz guard the choir entrance, recalling the saint's legendary battle with a dragon. The organ tradition reaches back to Andreas Jäger, who built the main instrument in 1753 and a second choir organ around 1750. Since 1909 the former monastery next door has housed the town hall and the city museum.