Aegidienkirche, Church ruin in Hanover, Germany
The Aegidienkirche is a roofless Gothic hall church of brown-grey sandstone in Hanover's old town, at the corner of Breite Straße and Osterstraße. Its square west tower rises in tiers to an open metal framework, with a clock face on the upper stone storey. Tall pointed-arch windows stand empty, and the nave walls end in gables; the eastern end has five pointed arches, the central one holding a dark metal cross with a red wreath.
A chapel on this site was replaced in 1163 by a Romanesque church, which in turn gave way in 1347 to the present Gothic hall church, built with sandstone from the Deister hills. Sudfeld Vick added a Baroque facade to the tower in 1703–11, and Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves remodelled the interior with cast-iron columns in 1826. Bombing on the night of 8 October 1943 destroyed the church; in 1952 it was inaugurated as a war memorial.
The church is dedicated to Saint Giles, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Since 1985 a peace bell (bonshō) donated by Hanover's twin city Hiroshima hangs at the tower entrance; it is rung at the annual memorial service on 6 August, Hiroshima Day. The tower stump has carried a carillon since 1958 that sounds regularly.
The ruin stands in Hanover's old town at the corner of Breite Straße and Osterstraße, near Aegidientorplatz. The floor is asphalt with painted white lines, and a wooden bench sits by the wall. The tower holds a ground plan of the building; a height mark of the 1868–1918 Prussian survey is fixed to the tower.
The peace bell at the tower entrance was a gift from Hanover's Japanese twin city Hiroshima, donated in 1985. It is a bonshō, a Japanese temple bell, and it is rung at the memorial service held every 6 August for the victims of the atomic bombing. The tower stump above received a carillon in 1958 that sounds regularly.
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