Glavni trg 1
5271 Vipava
Vinoteka Vipava
Glavni trg 8
5271 Vipava
The church stands in the middle of the village, in the central square (plac). It is surrounded by the wall of the former cemetery, which has two entrances. The church is first mentioned 1373. According to local legend, it was built in the 13th century by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The present-day church stands on the foundations of its medieval predecessor from the early 1570s. Only the keystones have been preserved from the original Gothic building, which are now incorporated in the interior walls of the church and to the front of the communion table. The church was rebuilt almost entirely in the second half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. It was consecrated on 29 August 1765 by the Archbishop of Gorizia, Karel Mihael Attems.
To the right of the bell tower, three stone slabs with embossed equal-armed crosses (perhaps the consecration crosses of the old church) are built into the ground floor of the façade, which is considered to be proof of the presence of Maltese knights in Slap. Three lunette fields above the cornice on the northern wall of the nave and the presbytery were painted with frescoes by Tone Kralj in 1967. On the back wall of the Chapel of St. Notburga, Franc Jelovšek painted an altarpiece in the fresco technique around 1744. He placed St. Donatus and St. Eurosia, the patrons of severe weather, lightning and storms, in front of the altar pillar structure. Two putti bearing the coats of arms of the sponsors of the painting hover above the saints in the corners.
The pillar-type high altar of St. Matthias, made of reddish and yellow marble and attributed to the circles close to the workshop of Pasquale Lazzarini, was made in the first half of the 18th century. The painting of St. Matthias in the throne and the painting of St. James the Greater in the attic are the work of Mihael Stroj.