Église catholique Sainte-Madeleine

Église catholique Sainte-Madeleine is a Catholic church in France, known for combining a surviving Gothic choir with neo-baroque reconstruction. Only its late Gothic choir remains from the first building. It dates from 1478, when it became the city’s last Gothic church, with a five-sided apse and soaring arches.

Fire destroyed much of the building in 1904, leaving those medieval features among the principal survivors. Fritz Beblo and Karl Mades rebuilt it between 1910 and 1912. Their design places a simple exterior beneath an onion-domed tower, while pilasters and curved lintels signal neo-baroque influence. Alfred Marzolff’s west-façade crucifix adds a powerful sculptural accent. Ernest Weber’s colourful ceramic Saint Madeleine holds a perfume bottle at the side portal, flanked by two angels with flowing twentieth-century hairstyles. Christ appears as the Good Shepherd on the north portal.

Inside, white walls focus attention on René Kuder’s restored Stations of the Cross and fragments of sixteenth-century murals. A chapel preserves fragments of colourful sixteenth-century murals. Together, these details connect a 1478 foundation, a 1904 fire, and a twentieth-century rebuilding.