St. Nicholas (Speyer)

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The Church of St. Nikolaus in Speyer was a Romanesque church that was rebuilt in Gothic style in 1456 and demolished in the 19th century.

History and buildings

The ruins of St. Nikolaus in 1782, to the left of them the Nikolaus or Domstaffel tower of the city fortifications
Interior view of the ruin; Drawing by Johannes Ruland

The Church of St. Nikolaus ( Nikolauskapelle ) stood on the site of today's Antikenhalle , slightly north of the choir area of ​​the cathedral in the immediate vicinity of the Bishop's Palace . It is documented from 1242 and already existed when Bishop Konrad von Eberstein gave the rector of the church a building site in that year in order to build a pastoral care house next to it.

Located near the Rhine and the port, the church was also the guild church of the Speyer Rhine merchants, shipbuilders and boatmen with the appropriate St. Nicholas patronage . Bishop Reinhard von Helmstatt started a new Gothic building for the Nikolauskapelle in 1456. Inside, the main altar was dedicated to St. Nicholas, the side altar to St. Pantaleon . From 1571 the church served the nearby Jesuits as a place for sermons and services, but it soon turned out to be too small, which is why in 1598 they received the St. Christopher's Chapel with the adjoining Old Dompropstei and initially their own church and later established the Jesuit College . The Nikolauskapelle finally fell victim to the city ​​fire of 1689, became a ruin and fell into disrepair. When the Antikenhalle was built in 1825, the still impressive remains of the building were torn down.

According to surviving views from the 19th century, it was an east-facing Romanesque , partially Gothicized church, on the south side of the choir a pointed helmeted tower was built, which still had Romanesque style features in the basement. In front of him was the little rectory to the south. The main entrance seems to have been on the south side of the nave. Apparently there was also a small aisle or an entrance porch there.

To the north-west of the complex, where today a staircase between the Antikenhalle and Friedrich-Spee-Haus leads down to the Sun Bridge, stood the Nikolaus or Domstaffel tower of the city ​​fortifications, named after the chapel . The stairs were exactly in the basement of the tower and led to the Sun Bridge, which was originally called St. Nicholas Bridge after the chapel. Today Nikolausgasse, the former connection between the staircase and the St. Magdalena monastery, is a reminder of the Speyer church . The area between the bridge and St. Magdalena was renamed Sonnengasse after the nearby Zur Sonne inn, probably in the Middle Ages, so that Nikolausgasse ends at the Sonnengasse.

literature

Web links

Commons : St. Nikolaus (Speyer)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Wolfgang Eger : Speyer street names. A lexicon. Hermann G. Klein Verlag, Speyer 1985.

Coordinates: 49 ° 19 ′ 4.7 ″  N , 8 ° 26 ′ 35 ″  E