Elisabeth Church (Marburg)

St. Elizabeth's Church in Marburg, Germany, was built by the Order of the Teutonic Knights in honour of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Her tomb made the church an important pilgrimage destination during the late Middle Ages.

The church is one of the earliest purely Gothic churches in German-speaking areas, and is held to be a model for the architecture of Cologne Cathedral. It is built from sandstone in a cruciform layout. The nave and its flanking aisles have a vaulted ceiling more than 20 m (66 ft) high. The triple choir consists of the Elisabeth choir, the High choir and the Landgrave choir. The crossing is separated from the nave by a stone rood screen. In earlier times, the front part of the church had been reserved for the knights of the Order. The church has two towers with an approximate height of 80 m (263 ft). The northern one is crowned by a star, the southern one by a knight. It served as an inspiration for St. Paul's Church in Strasbourg.

The Gothic shrine of St. Elizabeth is the most important treasure of the church, but other pieces of religious art are also exhibited.

Construction started in 1235, the year Elizabeth was canonized. The church was consecrated in 1283. However, the towers were not finished until 1340. The church was property of the Order of the Teutonic Knights; some buildings of the Order still exist near the church, among them the Deutschhausgut, which now houses the mineral collection and the department of geography of the Philipps University of Marburg.

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