St. Preimskirche Bad Gastein, Catholic parish church in Bad Gastein, Austria

St. Preimskirche is a Catholic parish church in Bad Gastein featuring Neo-Gothic architecture with pointed arches, stepped buttresses, and decorative windows throughout its single-nave structure. The building includes a four-story tower with a spire and a two-story sacristy on the northeastern side.

A chapel predecessor is said to have been enlarged into a church in 1122, but the present building is the fourth on the site. The 1720s church by Oswald Stuelebmer was closed in 1858; the foundation stone of the Neo-Gothic replacement was laid in 1866 to plans by district engineer Pieschel, built by Jakob Ceconi and consecrated in 1876.

The name Preimskirche is the local German form of Primuskirche, referring to the patron saints Primus and Felician. The high altar, built in 1953 by sculptor Jakob Adlhart, holds a Gothic Madonna with a halo of rays from around 1490, moved here from the pilgrimage church of Maria Bühel, flanked by Baroque figures of Saints Virgil and Rupert. In the tower hall hangs an 1846 copy of a painting showing the origin legend of Bad Gastein.

The church has been closed since March 2023 due to structural cracks in the masonry caused by ground movements from the nearby Graukogel slope. Check accessibility before visiting, as the interior remains off-limits while repairs and assessments continue.

The high altar's two relief wings, carved by Jakob Adlhart in 1953, show the martyrdoms of Primus and Felician: Primus at a waterfall, his scourging and death in the Colosseum; Felician with a water jug, a stag revealing the healing spring, and Rome's Santo Stefano Rotondo. A 1846 copy of the Bad Gastein origin legend hangs in the tower hall.