Peterskirche

Peterskirche stands in Heidelberg's old town as its oldest church, first recorded in 1196, when a priest named Konrad served here. The Prince-Bishopric of Worms donated it, and the dedication to St Peter ties it to Worms Cathedral. The young city of 1225 left the church outside its walls, because the first town covered far less ground. From around 1400 it belonged to the university, and since 1896 it has been the official university church.

A late Gothic rebuild between 1485 and 1496 transformed the church, and two chapels followed in 1496. Alexander Bellendörfer, chancellor of the Electoral Palatinate, laid the foundation stone, and his epitaph remains inside. The town's destruction of 1689 and 1693 burnt the church down to its tower stump. A Baroque restoration raised one large hall. Land sales for the Odenwald railway funded a Neo-Gothic renovation of 1864 to 1870, which turned the interior into a three-aisled hall. Only the choir, the old sacristy and the university chapel remain medieval. The year 1883 brought a Luther oak for Luther's four hundredth birthday and a tower modelled on Freiburg Minster. Modern art arrived with Matthias Eder's free-standing cross, Lee Choon-Mann's sculpture of Jesus and nine stained glass windows by Johannes Schreiter.

Inside, you pass about one hundred and fifty epitaphs of professors and Electoral court members on the walls. Marsilius of Inghen, the university's founding rector, was buried here, though his grave has not survived. The church belongs to no regular parish: it hosts Protestant university services, concerts and public discussions called the Peterskirchendialog. In term time the Academic Lunchbreak adds short scholarly talks. Outside, the old churchyard once served as the town's main cemetery. The gravestone of Hans Jacob Rieter, a Swiss textile merchant killed in a robbery in 1811, stands there still.