This final seminar paper covers the early construction stages of the parish church of the Assumption of Virgin Mary in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia, which was built in the 13th century as a late Romanesque basilica. In the paper, I first focus on the archival sources, literature, and the current state of research. Of key importance is a new analysis of the document from 1275, which offers an interpretation different from the ones established so far. The thesis that is therefore supported is that the church had been built before the arrival of the Dominican monks, who built a monastery alongside it after 1275. The architectural features of the church, such as the layout, the Lombard cross-ribbed vaulting, and the scarcely-preserved stone decorations is discussed in a broader European context. The conclusion is made that the influence of the Cistercian architecture, which has been stressed by other authors, was only indirect. The main influence likely came from the Austrian Danube Region; a comparison is made with a group of parish and rural churches in the proximity of Bad Deutsch Altenburg. This group was most likely influenced by the architecture in Regensburg, Bavaria.
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