Rostock, St. Jacobs

The Jakobikirche once stood in Rostock’s Neustadt between Apostelstraße and Pädagogienstraße, the youngest of the city’s four great parish churches. Built from about 1300, it became the parish church of the western part of the city. A brick basilica with a rectangular choir, it was richer in decoration than the others, featuring thirty altars, a triforium of blind arcades and unusual side-ship walkways. The church’s copper-clad tower, completed in 1589, had two galleries after the earlier 1462 spire collapsed. Between 1484 and 1571 St Jakobi housed a collegiate foundation whose disputes with the dukes led to the violent Domfehde of 1486–1491. Humanists such as Hinrich Boger later served here, and the building’s English-influenced Gothic style was noted by contemporaries. Today a memory square marks the site, its north colonnade showing the height of the lost north aisle. Bronze plates in the ground show where the altar, organ and Fürstenstuhl once stood, and a preserved slab recalls the church’s patrons. The outline of the nave is cut into the paving, while a single grave slab at the north-west corner remains from the original fabric.