The pilgrimage church at St. Wolfgang am Wolfgangsee is one of the finest Gothic churches in Austria, and the reason the village exists at all. According to tradition, Bishop Wolfgang of Regensburg wandered the shores of this then-empty lake in the 970s CE, threw his axe into the air, and vowed to build a church wherever it landed. The axe landed here. Within a century the church had become a major pilgrimage destination, drawing visitors from across the Holy Roman Empire.
The interior is extraordinary. The high altarpiece, carved by Michael Pacher between 1471 and 1481, is a masterpiece of late Gothic woodcarving — a gilded, painted triptych over fourteen metres high, with intricately detailed scenes from the life of St. Wolfgang. Beside it stands a second altarpiece by Thomas Schwanthaler, added in 1676 and almost as impressive. The church has no single mediocre feature. The pilgrimage tradition continues: the village receives several hundred thousand visitors a year, many of them arriving by boat from the other end of the lake.