Description of the attraction
Bad Leonfelden is a small spa town located in the federal state of Upper Austria. It is located just 4 kilometers from the Czech border. This city is a balneological resort, famous for its mud baths.
The first settlement on this place appeared in the XII century, and since the XIV century the town of Leonfelden has gained great popularity thanks to its annual fairs. The settlement was quite well fortified, because it was subjected to frequent attacks from the troops of Bohemia and Turkey. Leonfelden acquired a special role in 1881, when the first sanatorium was founded here, which, however, was closed after the First World War. The resort resumed its activities already in the 60s of the XX century.
Despite the fact that fires often broke out in the city, and it was also severely destroyed during the Thirty Years War and the Napoleonic Wars, a large number of ancient Baroque buildings in Leonfelden were preserved. Of particular note is the Church of the Virgin Mary, known as the Bründlkirche. It was built in 1691 on the site of a healing spring. The interior of this temple is designed in a strict Baroque style.
Another church worth paying attention to is the center of the city parish. It was built even earlier - during the late Gothic, that is, somewhere in the middle of the 15th century. However, it was heavily rebuilt several times over the centuries, and therefore its appearance acquired the distinctive features of other styles, for example, the bell tower is already made in the Baroque style. The interior decoration of the cathedral is more recent - it belongs to the end of the 19th century and is especially famous for its luxurious carved neo-Gothic altar.
Outside the city limits, there are traces of ancient defensive fortifications, erected in the 17th century, if not even earlier. There are also two large museums in the city - one, local history, is located in the building of the now defunct parish church, and the other is located in an old school, opened back in 1577. On the territory of the city there is also an old cemetery, where you can find monuments and tombstones dating back to the 16th century.
