Bad Sankt Leonhard im Lavanttal ( sl, Sveti Lenart v Labotu) is a

spa town A spa town is a resort town based on a mineral spa (a developed mineral spring). Patrons visit spas to "take the waters" for their purported health benefits. Thomas Guidott set up a medical practice in the English town of Bath in 1668. He ...

in the district of Wolfsberg in the

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n state of Carinthia.

Geography

The municipality lies in the upper Lavant valley (''

Lavanttal The Lavant Valley (german: Lavanttal, sl, Labotska dolinaGams, Ivan. 1992. "Labotska dolina." ''Enciklopedija Slovenije'', vol. 6. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, pp. 87–87. or ''Laboška dolina''; Southern Bavarian: ''Lovnthol'') lies in the Lav ...

'') north of the district capital Wolfsberg. The municipal area comprises the cadastral communities of Erzberg, Görlitzen, Kliening, Bad Sankt Leonhard proper, Schiefling, Schönberg, Theißing, and Twimberg. Bad Sankt Leonhard has access to the

Süd Autobahn The Süd Autobahn (A2) ('South Motorway') is a motorway (''Autobahn'') in Austria. Completed in 1999, it runs from the outskirts of Vienna south via the cities of Graz and Klagenfurt to the border of Italy at Arnoldstein, where it joins the Autos ...

(A2). The Lavant Viaduct across the valley was inaugurated in 1986; with a height of , it is the second highest bridge in Austria.

History

The area was settled since

ancient Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cov ...

times, when a Roman road led through the Lavanttal up to the Obdach Saddle pass and the Mur valley in present-day

Upper Styria Upper Styria (german: Obersteiermark), in the Austrian usage of the term, refers exclusively to the northwestern, generally mountainous and well-wooded half of the federal state of Styria. The southwestern half of the state around the capital of ...

. In the 11th century, the surrounding

Carinthian Carinthia (german: Kärnten ; sl, Koroška ) is the southernmost Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Bavarian group. Carint ...

estates were enfeoffed to the Bishops of Bamberg by Emperor Henry II. A first chapel dedicated to Saint Leonard was consecrated during the tenure of Bishop

Otto Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', '' Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded f ...

(1102–1139). His successors also had Gomarn Castle erected in order to protect their possessions, mainly from the rivalling Bishops of Lavant who resided at nearby Twimberg Castle. The settlement below the chapel was first mentioned in a 1278 deed, its citizens already had received

town privileges Town privileges or borough rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium. The city law customary in Central Europe probably dates back to Italian models, which in turn were oriented towards the traditio ...

by 1311, at the time when the

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

parish church was erected. In the 15th century, mining for gold and silver became common in the area, run by the Fugger merchant family from

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ...

. Also, Sankt Leonhard became known for its mineral springs (''Preblauer''); the waters were mentioned by the physician Paracelsus in 1538. The Bamberg bishops finally sold the estates to the Habsburg empress Maria Theresa in 1759. Sankt Leonhard received the official status of a spa town (''Bad'') in 1935. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, several medieval stained glass windows of the parish church were sold and are now on display at

The Cloisters The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. The museum, situated in Fort Tryon Park, specializes in European medieval art and architecture, with a fo ...

museum in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Politics

Seats in the municipal council (''Gemeinderat'') as of 2015 local elections: * Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ): 12 *Liste Dieter Dohr (

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

): 6 * Austrian People's Party (ÖVP): 4 *

The Greens – The Green Alternative The Greens – The Green Alternative (german: Die Grünen – Die Grüne Alternative, ) is a green political party in Austria. The party was founded in 1986 under the name "Green Alternative" (''Grüne Alternative''), following the merger of the ...

: 1

Notable people

* Johann Tobias Bürg (1766–1835), astronomer, lived and died at Wiesenau Castle

References

{{Authority control Cities and towns in Wolfsberg District Lavanttal Alps