St. Georg Walldürn

The Wallfahrtsbasilika St. Georg stands in Walldürn, a town in the Neckar-Odenwald district of northern Baden-Württemberg. Built between 1698 and 1728 from red sandstone, it replaced an earlier church that had grown too small for the growing pilgrimage. The basilica was raised to the rank of *Basilica minor* by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Its east end, facing a slope, was once the main façade, though today the pilgrimage square lies in front of the west front. A Lourdes grotto with a chapel stands nearby, rebuilt after a fire in 2018.

The church owes its fame to the Blood Miracle of Walldürn, said to have occurred around 1330. Pope Eugen IV confirmed the event in 1445 and granted indulgences, sparking the pilgrimage that made Walldürn Germany’s largest eucharistic pilgrimage site. The Blood Altar in the north transept holds the corporale linked to the miracle, kept in a silver shrine made in Augsburg in 1683. The high altar, by Christian Mayer, features statues of St George and St Martin, patrons of the church, and a painting of the Last Supper completed in 1728.

Inside, the four-bay nave is covered by illusionistic ceiling paintings by Giovanni Francesco Marchini, depicting scenes from the life of Christ and the flight into Egypt. Georg Hennicke’s Baroque stucco work, including the Stations of the Cross in the Bérain style, lines the walls. The organ, built by Christian Dauphin between 1719 and 1723, was once the largest in southern Germany, though only its richly decorated case by Georg Friedrich Schmiegd survives today. The basilica’s twin towers, capped with lanterns, and its steeply pitched roofs give the exterior a striking silhouette against the Odenwald hills.