St. Nikolaus, Gothic church in Babenhausen, Germany.

St. Nikolaus is a Gothic church in Babenhausen with a white plastered facade and red-brown sandstone corners and openings. Its tall front is topped by a steep gable and a slender, multi-tiered dark spire with a clock face on the upper wall. Inside, pointed arches banded in red and pale stone rise from square red piers, and a carved wooden altarpiece stands above the altar.

The lower parts of the Romanesque tower are the oldest surviving fabric; the present Gothic choir was begun in 1383, and the flat-roofed nave followed in 1472 after Babenhausen became a residence of the Hanau-Lichtenberg line in 1458. The Reformation was introduced in 1545 by Erasmus Alberus, and the tower lost its top to a storm in 1608 and to fire in 1811. After wartime damage, a renovation from 2001 to 2006 restored the original floor level and earned the Hessian Monument Protection Prize in 2009.

The church has been Lutheran since 1545, when Erasmus Alberus introduced the Reformation at the wish of Count Philipp IV of Hanau-Lichtenberg. The carved winged altar is a votive gift from Countess Sibylle of Baden-Sponheim, who promised it if she bore a male heir; Philipp IV was born in 1514. The altar, carved in limewood and finished around 1518, is attributed by some scholars to Matthias Grünewald, Hans Backoffen or Tilman Riemenschneider.

The church stands in the town centre facing the Marktplatz, whose paving was lowered to the church's original level during the 2001–2006 renovation. The floor inside was then restored to its pre-1861 height, so the entrance is reached by a step down from the square. The building is an active Lutheran parish church; visits are possible outside service times.

The carved winged altarpiece, made of limewood around 1518, was vowed by Countess Sibylle of Baden-Sponheim after bearing only daughters until 1513; a male heir, Philipp IV, was born in 1514. Art historians have proposed Matthias Grünewald, Hans Backoffen and Tilman Riemenschneider as its unknown carver. Opened, it shows full-length reliefs including Saint Nicholas and Saint Catherine above reliquary busts.