[2] Stiftskirche / collegiate church

Description

church of St. Goar. Between 772 and 781, Prüm Abbey had a new church built on the site where St. Goar had once erected his chapel and where his tomb was located.
After repeated church fires and renovations, the nave of today´s collegiate church was built between 1444 and 1469 by Count Philipp von Katzenelnbogen, who resided at Rheinfels Castle. It is a late Gothic, three-nave gallery hall with a built-in west tower, which is characteristic of Gothic church buildings on the Middle Rhine. The Romanesque hall crypt from the 11th century, which housed the tomb of St. Goar, remained intact and is now the oldest part of the church. The late Romanesque-early Gothic choir with its flanking towers dates from around 1250. The nave paintings were created between 1469 and 1489. This means that the collegiate church has the most significant collection of late Gothic wall paintings on the Middle Rhine.

In 1527, the Reformation was introduced in the town of St. Goar under Landgrave Philipp I of Hesse. This makes St. Goar the oldest Protestant parish in the Rhineland.
The collegiate church contains the tombs of Landgrave Philipp II of Hesse-Rheinfels and Landgravine Anna Elisabeth of Bavaria, among others. The founder of the town, St. Goar, is commemorated in the church by a depiction on the pulpit and, in the north aisle, an image on a keystone and a stained-glass window. The organ, dating from 1820, was built by the famous Stumm family of organ builders. (Photos: Katrin Gloggengießer)