Pfarrkirche hl. Bartholomäus, Ranten

The parish church of Ranten stands on a hillside north of the village in the municipality of Ranten, Murau district, Styria. Dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, it is a Roman Catholic church under the deanery of Murau in the diocese of Graz-Seckau. Both the church and the adjoining cemetery are protected monuments.

Its origins go back to 1155, when a church was first recorded and served as the main parish church of the region. The present Gothic building, completed with vaulting by 1523, shares construction methods with the church in Schöder and was likely built by the same workshop. A cycle of frescoes painted between 1560 and 1570 on the exterior wall shows Lutheran imagery from the Reformation, surviving despite the region’s later recatholicisation. Inside, a 1641 high altar was altered in 1697 by the sculptor Franz Kamerlander, who added statues of Saint Joseph and Saint Anthony.

The church has a two-bay choir with a five-sided apse and ribbed vaulting, its bosses carved with a head, the Lamb of God and a blessing hand. The nave, with five unequal bays and net ribbed vaults, leans slightly south of the choir axis. A lower north aisle runs alongside, connected by pointed arches and lit by a spiral stair in the tower’s south-east corner. The tower itself rises in Gothic lower stages before ending in a 1748 onion dome and lantern. Nearby stands a small octagonal charnel house under a pyramid roof, completing the ensemble.