Church of Our Lady, Kalundborg

St. Mary's Church (Danish: Vor Frue Kirke ) in the Danish town of Kalundborg is one of the most unusual medieval religious buildings in Europe. The five towers brick building is the parish church of the Evangelical Lutheran Kalundborger Old Town community.

The church building

The built largely still in Romanesque style central building was built soon after 1200., The initiative for the construction is the nobleman Strangesen Peder and his wife Ingeborg attributed, whose father was regarded as the founder of the city Esbern Snare. The floor plan is a Greek cross, surmounted by a 44 -meter-high central tower stands on four granite columns and the cross arm ends are formed by four octagonal towers. This structure is rare in Western Europe, in Orthodox churches more frequently. After a collapse of the central tower was reconstructed in 1827 and 1871. Although the high-lying church has a castle-like impression that she was not a fortified church and also was not in conjunction with the city's fortifications. Supposedly, the construction points to the idea of ​​the heavenly Jerusalem, which was conceived of in the Middle Ages as a fortified city with five towers. No other municipality in northern Europe followed this model, so that the Marienkirche of Kalundborg is not only one of the most unusual monuments in Denmark but throughout northern Europe.

The church in Kalundborg about 1895