St. Pankratius, Romanesque church building in Odenthal, Germany

St. Pankratius is a Romanesque pillar basilica in Odenthal, built in the 11th century as a single-nave church and enlarged around 1200 into a flat-roofed three-nave structure with a four-story west tower. In 1893/94 the Romanesque choir was replaced by a neo-Romanesque extension with two nave bays, a transept and a semicircular apse. The west portal carries a coat-of-arms relief and a Madonna and Child; inside, round arches rest on plain pillars.

Built in the 11th century as a single-nave church, it replaced an earlier wooden church. By the late 12th century it had been enlarged into a flat-roofed three-nave Romanesque pillar basilica with a four-story west tower. In 1893/94 the Romanesque choir with its semicircular apse was demolished and replaced by a neo-Romanesque extension with two nave bays, a transept and a new choir.

The church keeps the Rhineland's oldest bell still in use, part of an eight-bell bronze peal. The west portal carries a coat-of-arms relief and a Madonna and Child; inside, a 15th-century St. Christopher stands at the first left pillar, and the fourteen Stations of the Cross were painted by an unknown artist of the Nazarene school in the 19th century.

The church stands in Odenthal's historic centre beside the parish house, with the west portal facing the village core. Entry is through the west portal, where a wrought-iron grille from 1979 separates the vestibule from the medieval interior. The tower was re-plastered and painted in medieval colours in 1972.

The eight-bell bronze peal includes the third bell, described in the sources as one of the oldest bells in the Rhineland still in use. The sources give no casting date for it. The organ, built in 1977 by Gebr. Oberlinger of Windesheim, reused parts of the previous instrument, and its Classicist case from the first half of the 19th century came from another church.