Jakobskapelle (St. James's Chapel), Zell am See

Jakobskapelle, or St. James’s Chapel, is a small Roman Catholic chapel beside Kaprun Castle, giving visitors a quiet historical stop close to one of the area’s older fortified landmarks. The chapel is dedicated to Saint James the Elder and dates back to at least 1562, probably under the Diether von Schedling family connected with the castle. It is also associated with the burial place of Balthasar Dieter von Schedling, a castle magistrate who died in 1563.

The chapel began as a simple late-Gothic structure, but between 1734 and 1736 it was fully reshaped in Baroque style. The rebuilding gave the chapel square windows, a pyramid-shaped roof, and a more ordered Baroque interior. Its three-bay nave, broad wall pillars, flat groin vault, and belt arches make the small space feel larger. The altarpiece, marked 1710, predates the main Baroque renovation.

The chapel’s modern appearance also reflects a difficult 20th-century history. After the Anschluss in 1938, owner Heinrich Gildemeister was expelled, and the castle and chapel grounds were confiscated for military use and as a wartime jail. The chapel was vandalized during the war and left roofless after its collapse in the late 1940s.