Marktkirche

The Marktkirche stands in the centre of Paderborn, beside the Rathausplatz and next to the Theodorianum grammar school. It was built as the Jesuits’ and university church of Saint Francis Xavier and is now the parish church of the inner-city parish of Saint Liborius. The building occupies the site of an earlier Protestant church, forcibly closed in the 17th century and pulled down in 1784.

The church’s baroque design was drawn by the Jesuit lay brother Anton Hülse and completed in ten years. Hülse used round pillars and ribbed vaults, creating a style that influenced later Weser Baroque churches. In 1945 the great baroque high altar was destroyed, but after a long campaign led by figures such as Franz Josef Weber and Georg Hagenhoff it was reconstructed in stages between 1989 and 2004.

Inside, the three-aisled nave rises to an elaborate altar of three storeys, twelve twisted columns and rich carvings. The organ case, rebuilt several times since the 17th century, remains an important part of the interior. The church’s exterior shows a two-storey façade with pilasters and blind arcading, crowned by a triangular gable.