Marktkirche

The Essen Marktkirche stands in the city centre beside the old market square, once the heart of Essen’s trade, politics and worship. Built as a Romanesque church, it became a late-Gothic hall church and in 1563 held the first public Protestant communion in the city. The building carries layers of history: its first stones were laid around 1043, and its tower once reached far above the rooftops.

The church’s story is tied to powerful figures such as Abbess Theophanu, who secured the market right in 1043, and Heinrich Barenbroch, the reformer whose grave lies in the choir. After wartime destruction left only the outer walls, the city planned to demolish the ruins, but Baudezernent Sturm Kegel insisted on rebuilding the eastern bays. In 2006 the architect Eckhard Gerber added a glass west choir, giving the surviving torso a new face.

Inside, visitors find the two eastern bays restored to worship, with the old west portals now mounted on the gallery. A digital organ by Ewald Kienle plays from the gallery, its twenty-six stops leading the congregation’s song. The apocalyptic bronze reliefs on the west portals recall the war that nearly erased the church, while the glass west choir floods the space with blue light at dusk.