Pfarrkirche St. Martin, Catholic parish church in Schwyz, Switzerland

The Pfarrkirche St. Martin is a Catholic parish church in Schwyz featuring a monumental facade that faces the main town square. The building displays large arched windows and four side entrances along its outer walls, with a tower rising prominently above the surrounding roofs.

The present church is the seventh building on this site in the town centre. A first church stood in the first half of the 8th century, followed around 1000 by an Ottonian church possibly destroyed by an earthquake in 1117; a Romanesque church was consecrated in 1122, a larger Gothic hall church followed in the 15th century, and its tower base of 1481 survives. After the town fire of 1642 the church was rebuilt, and the current late-Baroque building by Jakob and Johann Anton Singer was erected from 1769 to 1774 under a contract of 20,000 guilders.

Saint Martin of Tours is the patron of both the church and the canton of Schwyz; his image appeared on the canton's seals and coins into the early modern period. His feast day, 11 November, is a public holiday in the municipality. The Kerchel, the ossuary in the former churchyard, is named from Latin carcer, meaning enclosure.

You can enter through four side doors or the main facade, which gives you different ways to explore the space. Visitors should note that religious services and prayer times may affect when the church is open for viewing.

Next to the church stands the Kerchel, a separate bone house built between 1518 and 1520. This independent structure served as both an ossuary and a small chapel, showing how people in this region handled burials during the Middle Ages.