Church of Our Saviour

The Salvatorkirche stands on Duisburg’s Burgplatz, replacing an earlier royal church. Built from the 14th century onward, it is one of the most important late-Gothic structures on the right bank of the Lower Rhine. The German Order began the work, using funds from citizens who also wanted a watchtower; the tower reached 112 metres before fires and restorations changed its height. The church survived the 1943 bombing raid that levelled much of the old town. While the nave burned, the walls and vaults remained, sparing the graves inside. Gerhard Mercator, the map-maker, and Johannes Clauberg, founder of Duisburg’s old university, lie beneath slabs in the southern chapel. A 1960s rebuild left the tower’s charred top as a war memorial. Inside, the five-bay nave shows grey tuff walls and dark slate roofs. A 15th-century font, a late-Gothic sacrament house and a 17th-century Renaissance pulpit stand among eighteen memorial slabs. A modern stained-glass window remembers the November 1938 pogrom. The tower’s octagonal bell chamber, added in 1903, now crowns the exposed brick shaft that marks the sky above the square.