St. Remigius, Medieval church in Falera, Switzerland.
St. Remigius is a church in Falera with a 13th-century Romanesque tower whose 1.80 m thick walls lean 50 cm to the southwest, pressed by the earth banked up to form the ship-shaped churchyard wall. The tower's stone-slab tent roof rises above a nave and a late-Gothic chancel of 1491; the nave length equals the tower height.
A church dedicated to St. Remigius in Falera is documented in a 1045 deed of Emperor Henry III, who gave estates there to Schänis Abbey. Building work is attested between 1475 and 1491, when indulgences were granted for the rebuilding and Bishop Balthasar Brennwald of Chur consecrated three Gothic altars on 7 December 1491. The new Herz-Jesu church took over parish duties in 1904.
The village emblem of Falera carries the church, and the building is known locally as Baselgia veglia, the old church. Inside, the Last Supper painted by Georg Wilhelm Gresner of Konstanz in 1646 runs the length of the north wall; Michel Mirer whitewashed it in 1766, and it was uncovered in 1936. The chancel holds a 1623 Mount of Olives scene with its donor's coat of arms.
The church stands apart from the village at the foot of the wooded Mutta hill, next to the prehistoric cult and astronomy site, so it is reached on foot from Falera. The ship-shaped cemetery wall encloses the building; the tower leans about 50 cm to the southwest because it compresses the loose fill beneath it. The interior can be locked outside services.
The tower leans about 50 cm to the southwest because its 1.80 m thick walls compressed the loose earth heaped up to give the churchyard wall its ship shape, a reference to Noah's Ark. Inside hangs a bell cast around 1300, 71 cm across, inscribed for Saints Remigius and Germanus and the four Evangelists; it is among the oldest bells still rung in Graubünden.
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