Old Catholic parish church of St. Anthony Abbas

The old Catholic parish church of St Antonius Abbas stands in Hau, a village within Bedburg-Hau in the Kleve district of North Rhine-Westphalia. A small late-Gothic chapel with a west tower and five-sided choir was first recorded in 1378 and remained largely unchanged until the late 19th century. In 1435 an Antonite preceptory was built next to the chapel, followed by a monastery in 1652, though both were later demolished. The church became a parish in 1861 after the old chapel could no longer serve the growing congregation. In 1882 the architect Franz Pelzer enlarged the building into a three-aisled hall church, adding side aisles under sweeping hip roofs that branch from the main roof. All three naves are covered by ribbed vaults, giving the interior a unified medieval appearance despite the 19th-century expansion. Inside, visitors see a notable late-medieval crucifixion group whose corpus dates from the early 15th century. The tower, repaired after lightning strikes in 1863, still rises above the west end in its original medieval form. The quiet village setting and the church’s layered history make it a place where past and present meet in simple stone and timber.