Description of the attraction
The Holy Trinity Column in Klagenfurt is a plague pillar, built with funds from the Parliament of Carinthia on the square in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit in 1680-1681. In 1965 it was moved to its current location on the Old Square.
The original column of the Holy Trinity was made of wood and installed on the Square of the Holy Spirit in front of the city hospital and the oldest cemetery in this village. The reason for the erection of the memorial pillar was the gratitude of the local population to Heaven for the fact that the plague epidemic has finally ended. The end of the plague was facilitated by the strict division of the city into sectors and the imposed rules of hygiene, but uneducated people still believed that it was not without the help of God. After the siege of Vienna by the Turks and its subsequent liberation, which happened in 1683, the wooden plague pillar was replaced by a stone one and was named the Victory Column.
She was moved to another location several times. So, at the end of the 19th century, it was installed in a small park in the center of the city, and in 1965 - on the Old Square, on the site of the column of St. John of Nepomuk, built in 1737 and blown up 137 years later due to the fact that it interfered with laying new roads. Some of the statues that adorned the pillar of St. John of Nepomuk were removed from the rubble and installed on the facade of the local cathedral.
The Holy Trinity Column is set on a low square base. It is crowned with a globe, which is the symbol of the Earth, over which a crescent moon under the Christian cross is visible, which means the victory of the Austrians over the Ottomans. A plaque at the base of the column reminds of the plague epidemic.
