St. Kilian, Parish church in Erftstadt, Germany.

St. Kilian is a Catholic parish church in the centre of Lechenich, near the market square. The red brick building, rebuilt from 1746 to 1749 and consecrated in 1750, has a four-storey west tower crowned by a green copper onion dome and a cross. A polygonal apse with tall pointed windows, brick buttresses and a corbel table projects forward; three red-painted pinnacles with metal finials rise from the roof ridges, and a lower annex with a slate roof stands before the apse.

A first church on this site is documented in 1271, when Archbishop Engelbert II of Falkenburg confirmed the rights of St. Aposteln in Cologne. In 1485 the building was dedicated to St. Kilian. After the town fire of 1702 and further fires in 1722 and 1744, St. Aposteln had a Baroque brick church built from 1746 to 1749, consecrated in 1750. From 1864, designs by Cologne architect Ernst Friedrich Zwirner gave the nave Gothic tracery and stepped buttresses.

The church is dedicated to Saint Kilian, to whom it was consecrated in 1485, which gave it its name. A visitation protocol of 3 August 1662 records that the side altars were dedicated to the patrons of the confraternities: the Marian altar, mentioned as early as 1356, one to Saint Agatha, protector against fire, and one to Anthony the Great.

St. Kilian stands in the old town centre of Lechenich, a short walk from the market square, within the medieval street layout that still survives in plan. The church is a parish church in active use, so visitors should time their look at the exterior and interior around services rather than during them. The red brick apse with its tall pointed windows and the tower with its green copper onion dome are best seen from the surrounding lanes.

The tower was raised by an extra storey because the new nave roof, built by St. Aposteln, covered its lower sound windows. Its bells were cast in 1744 by Martinus Legros of Malmedy. Look for the horizontal stone bands on the added bell storey, unlike the rest of the tower.