St. James Chapel

The chapel that was named after St. James was built by butchers in the Middle Ages in the cemetery around St. Michael's Church.

The chapel, built in the middle of the 13th century, was used as a bone house (ossuary) because the cemetery around the church could not be expanded, so the bones were thrown from the stairs into the chapel crypt to continue to rest at a consecrated place.

The octagonal ground plan of the chapel comprises a Romanesque round church, a rotunda, which is covered by a pavilion roof. Turning towards St. Michael's Church you can see its pointed arch gate, to which a stairway leads. In its tympanum there is a Romanesque relief with dragons guarding the tree of life. Above this you can see a memorial plaque to the benefactors of the chapel.

It was used by Lutherans in the 17th century together with the Church of St. Michael between 1608 and 1674. Then it was re-consecrated. Later it was used only as a warehouse or for storing ammunition, until the parish priest György Prímes ordered that the chapel is to be used again for regular church service. The altarpiece depicting St. James is attributed to István Dorffmaister. In the 19th century, it functioned as a warehouse again. It was saved from demolition by Mayor Endre Póda and was restored between 1885-86 with the help of Ferenc Storno.

The church garden houses a Neo-Gothic Way of the Cross completed in 1892 based on the plans of Ferenc Storno Jr. The reliefs were made by Károly Hild, a stonecutter from Sopron. The St. James Chapel is a significant example of the transition between the Romanesque and Gothic styles in Hungary, and is one of the oldest medieval buildings in Sopron.

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Contact
9400 Sopron, Szent Mihály utca
+36 99/508-080
GPS: 47.688807 / 16.597960