Pfarrkirche Altenkirchen

The medieval brick church stands in the heart of Altenkirchen, a village on the northern coast of Rügen. Built soon after the Danish conquest of 1168, it began as a three-aisled Romanesque basilica and later became a Gothic hall church. A freestanding wooden belfry, possibly from the 14th or 17th century, rises beside the nave. The building belongs to a small parish that also includes churches in Bobbin, Dranske, Glowe and Vitt. It is one of the two oldest churches on the island, dating from the same period as the St.-Marien-Kirche in Bergen. In 2023 the German foundation for church monuments named it Church of the Year, an unendowed public honour. The parish has been served by notable pastors such as the writer Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten and the superintendent Friedrich Wilhelm von Schubert. Inside, the 13th-century limestone font shows four carved heads of the rivers of Paradise. A 14th-century triumph cross hangs above the nave, and the baroque altar of 1724 carries a 19th-century painting of Peter sinking. A sarsen slab set into the sacristy wall may be a pre-Christian priest stone or the tomb slab of a Slavic prince. The 1750 organ, rebuilt in 1971, still uses its original case and some ranks of pipes.