St. Moritz

St. Moritz in Augsburg stands on the Maximilianstraße in Swabia as a former collegiate church turned parish church. It began in 1019 as a burial place for Bishop Bruno, brother of Emperor Henry II, outside the city walls between the cathedral and St Ulrich and Afra. After fires and collapses it was rebuilt larger in 1314, then heightened in 1440 and given a Gothic east choir in 1443. The freestanding tower was raised by Burkhart Engelberg in 1494 and crowned with a Renaissance octagonal upper section and cupola in 1533–34. The church became a centre of Baroque transformation under Johann Jakob Herkomer in 1714–15, when Melchior Steidl painted the ceiling and Dominikus Zimmermann designed new altars. The collegiate chapter, once led by noble canons and patricians, was dissolved in 1803, leaving St Moritz as a simple parish church. In 1944 the interior was gutted by bombing; only the tower survived. Rebuilt between 1946 and 1950 by Dominikus Böhm, the stripped-down basilica kept its Romanesque structure while the floor was later raised and the choir stalls added. Today the church houses the City Pastoral Office of Augsburg diocese, offering low-threshold services and a café called the Moritzpunkt. The nave and apse contain sculptures by Georg Petel from the Thirty Years War period. The late-Romanesque tower with its Gothic blind tracery and Renaissance cupola remains a landmark on the skyline.