Alte Pfarrkirche St. Martin, Former parish church in Moosach, Munich, Germany
The Alte Pfarrkirche St. Martin is a stone church built in the 12th and 13th centuries, with Romanesque remains in the apse and tower. Around 1500 it was enlarged in late Gothic style. Inside, the choir fresco by Franz Leopold Hager (1763) shows the centurion of Capernaum, and the nave fresco by Johann Martin Heigl (1758) depicts St. Martin before the Trinity.
A wooden church on this site was first recorded in 815 as the private church of Count Cundhart. The present stone building dates from the 12th and 13th centuries, making it Munich's oldest surviving church. Around 1500 it was modernised in late Gothic style; during the Thirty Years' War it was demolished and used as a horse stable. It became an independent parish in 1909, and after Moosach joined Munich in 1913, a larger new St. Martin's was built near Chemnitzer Platz in the early 1920s.
The church is dedicated to St. Martin, whose figure in bishop's robes appears on the high altar and in Johann Martin Heigl's 1758 ceiling fresco, where he intercedes before the Trinity for the church's founders. The left side chapel holds a Baroque group of St. Anne, possibly carved by Munich sculptor Tobias Bader.
The church stands on Moosacher St.-Martins-Platz, where the old village centre meets the modern street grid. The former parish church is no longer the local parish seat, so it is not always open; check opening times before travelling. The interior is small, with the Annakapelle to the left of the nave and the two side altars flanking the choir.
The oldest surviving copy in Germany of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln, made around 1700, stands on the altar table of the right side altar. The church also keeps a 1997 organ by Josef Maier and a pulpit that survived the 17th-century refurnishing.
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