Maria Waitschach, Parish church and ossuary in Guttaring, Austria

Maria Waitschach is a parish church with an attached ossuary perched on a hilltop overlooking the Carinthian landscape. The complex includes the church building, the bone house for storing human remains, and a cemetery that together form a protected historical site.

Maria Waitschach was first documented on 2 November 1390 as a branch of Guttaring, though a bowl-shaped stone in front of the church suggests an earlier sanctuary. Construction of the present church began in 1447, as an inscription on a northern buttress records. It served as a fortified church against the Turkish threat, and its defences remain visible. The Gothic charnel house (Karner) dates from 1535.

The church is a pilgrimage site dedicated to a crowned Madonna statue with the child in a halo of rays, flanked by her parents Joachim and Anna. The Gothic charnel house from 1535 has frescoes inside, and traces of exterior frescoes including a sundial remain.

The church stands at 1134 m in Waitschach, reachable by winding municipal roads from Guttaring, about five kilometres north, or from Hüttenberg, roughly one kilometre to the northeast. The lanes climb steeply and have curves; the hilltop is exposed to changing weather.

The Gothic charnel house (Karner) dates from 1535, and its interior walls carry fresco paintings; on the exterior, only remnants of the frescoes survive, among them a sundial. The church and the Karner are being restored continuously, while the old defensive walls around the site are visibly decaying.