St. Mary church

The Marienkirche stands in the heart of Stendal, a town in the Altmark region of Saxony-Anhalt. Built in the Brick Gothic style, it occupies the central square just east of the town hall and close to the main shopping street. The church’s two 82-metre towers are the second tallest in the Altmark, surpassed only by St Stephen’s in Tangermünde a kilometre away. A stone bridge with a small spire links the towers above the nave roof. The late-Gothic hall interior has three aisles, a surrounding ambulatory and a richly decorated choir screen. The church’s long history is visible in its furnishings. A Romanesque basilica once stood on this site; fragments of its 12th-century fittings remain in the chancel screen and a 14th-century triumphal cross. The present hall church was consecrated in 1447 after a 27-year build. Justus Jonas the Elder delivered the first Lutheran sermon in Brandenburg here in 1538. The eight-metre-high high altar, carved in Flemish-Dutch style in 1470, shows scenes from the life of Mary and the childhood of Jesus on its inner wings. An astronomical clock installed in 1580 weighs 100 kilograms and uses a 3.25-metre pendulum. Inside, visitors find the high altar with its painted wings, the 16th-century pulpit moved in 1844, and the bronze font of 1474 now in the Mariazeiten Chapel. The organ, built in 1580 by Hans Scherer the Elder, holds around 2,600 pipes across three manuals. Twelve bells hang in the towers, including the Marienglocke and the Faule Anna by Gerdt van Wou. The church’s astronomical clock, restored in the 1970s, still chimes every five days.