Germany Guide
Lower Saxony
Marktkirche
Address: Markt
The medieval Marktkirche – the southernmost example of north Germany's love affair with Gothic brick – is the heart of the Altstadt, perched on a barely noticeable hill above the Leine River. The church's mighty tower powers up 98m as a launch pad for a spire – and ends instead in a pinprick. Why Hannover residents are so proud of this landmark is a mystery because their whimpering turret is a fudge, a miniature version of the architect's plans enforced by empty coffers and builders who, a contemporary chronicle relates, were "faint and taken of the sickness". After almost total wartime obliteration, a faithful rebuild has swept the interior clean of later furniture to leave the austere purity conceived when the church was erected in 1366. A Gothic Passion altar survives from the Reformation purges; behind, St George suffers his trials in medieval stained glass, and to the left, sprouting from a base like a gramophone trumpet, is an oversized fifteenth-century font featuring the Marktkirche's second saint, St James, with the staff and scallop shell of Santiago de Compostela pilgrims. Don't leave without taking a look at the entrance doors with which Bauhaus sculptor Gerhard Marcks delivers a sermon on the "discordia and concordia" of modern German history.