The remote and densely forested valley apparently was not settled in
Roman times, when the area became part of the
Noricum province in 15 BC. From about 600,
Alpine Slavs migrated up the
Drava and its tributary valleys, followed by
Bavarian settlers from the mid 8th century onwards. In the early 9th century, the region passed under
Carolingian suzerainty. Part of the Imperial
Duchy of Carinthia from 976, the Kleinkirchheim estates were held by the Bavarian
Aribonid dynasty. In a document dated 5 July 1166, in which Archbishop Conrad II of
Salzburg confirms the donation of a chapel in the area to nearby
Millstatt Abbey, there is mention of
Chirchem as well as of a priest called Pabo. This is considered the first mention of Bad Kleinkirchheim. The settlement is also mentioned in a 1177 deed issued by
Pope Alexander III. The
Benedictine monks had the forests cleared and the valley colonized by
smallholder peasants. The settlement was later called Kleinkirchheim in order to distinguish it from
Großkirchheim in the Carinthian
Möll Valley. In 1469 Millstatt Abbey was dissolved and its estates passed to the Knightly Order of Saint George, established by Emperor
Frederick III to protect the area against the
Ottoman forces who after the
Fall of Constantinople already campaigned the
Balkans and the
Duchy of Carniola in the south. Turkish troops broke into the region in September 1473, robbing the town and plundering the valleys. On 25 June 1478 a group of about 600 farmers tried unsuccessfully to drive them out. By 1480 the Turks left, possibly as a result of an invasion by Hungarians under King
Matthias Corvinus. During the
Protestant Reformation, many farmers in the area turned
Lutheran and by the late 16th century freedom of religion had been bestowed on the residents. However, when the
Habsburg archduke
Ferdinand II rose to power, he ceded the Millstatt estates with Kleinkirchheim to the
Jesuits and made
Roman Catholicism the official religion. Nevertheless,
Crypto-Protestants still managed to smuggle books and hold secret meetings during the
Counter-Reformation, and according to the 1781
Patent of Toleration issued by Emperor
Joseph II, a Protestant or a Jew would have nearly all the rights of a Catholic. Bad Kleinkirchheim was shortly ruled within the French
Illyrian Provinces during the
Napoleonic Wars, but returned to the
Austrian Empire in 1816. The
Revolutions of 1848 also affected the area, as farmers (which then made up most of the town's population) got more rights. Finally, in 1973, Bad Kleinkirchheim officially had the "Bad" (bath, spa) attached to its name, Kleinkirchheim, a reference to the popular hot spring. ==Population==