Catholic Church St. Anna, Ratingen Lintorf

St. Anna in Ratingen-Lintorf stands as a three-aisled neo-Romanesque pillared basilica. It occupies a quiet spot in the south of the city, surrounded by low-rise homes and farmland. The present church dates from 1878, though its roots reach back to a medieval predecessor first built in the 11th century. That earlier building served the village for centuries until it fell into ruin after plundering by soldiers in 1632. The community outgrew the old church, which by the 19th century could no longer hold its thousand parishioners. The new church was designed by Cologne architect August Carl Lange in a neo-Roman style with Nazarene touches. Construction began in May 1877 after the medieval building was demolished. The church was blessed on St Anne’s Day 1878, though full consecration came only in 1893 during the height of the Kulturkampf. Inside, Heinrich Nüttgens painted the walls in 1901 in the Nazarene manner. The church keeps older treasures: a bell cast in 1484, a 15th-century oak Pietà, and a late Gothic Madonna crowned and holding a sceptre. Visitors enter through the west portal into a broad nave lined with red-brick columns. The apse holds a modern high altar and the 1954 bronze font by Egino Weinert. Stained-glass windows from the 1940s by Wilhelm Derix and Josef Strater throw coloured light across the stone floor. The tower received its first clock in 2004. Around the church lie the former parish house, the 1953 sexton’s house, and the Kettler House of 1959. The building was placed under Denkmalschutz in 1985 and remains the spiritual heart of the united parish of St Anna.