Johannes Nepomuk-Kapelle

The Johannes Nepomuk-Kapelle stands in the market town of Gutau in Upper Austria, beside the parish house where the St Leonfelderstraße meets the St Oswalderstraße. A broad Baroque pillar shrine, it is listed as a protected monument. The building dates from the rebuilding after the great fire of 1733 that swept through the village.

The chapel is dedicated to Saint John of Nepomuk, the Czech martyr whose statue occupies its round-arched niche. In 1963 the figure was restored by Klothilde Rauch, a local conservator from Gutau. The façade is framed by pilasters and crowned with a shingled, helm-shaped roof topped by a ball and weather vane. In 1978 the shrine was carefully dismantled and moved to accommodate road widening, then re-erected exactly as before.

Visitors find a single room inside the pillar shrine, its walls plain and its atmosphere quiet. The restored statue of Saint John of Nepomuk occupies the niche, its Baroque folds and features clearly visible. The surrounding streets belong to Gutau’s centre, where the parish house and other buildings form a small, orderly square. The chapel’s modest scale and careful restoration make it a quiet place to pause in the heart of the village.