St.-Ludgerus Basilica, Romanesque parish church in Werden, Essen, Germany.
St.-Ludgerus Basilica is a late Romanesque basilica of rough grey-brown stone, built as a three-aisled gallery basilica with an eastern transept and a polygonal choir. Its square west tower has a steep green copper pyramid roof, while a taller flat-topped tower carries a clock and a metal cross. The facade has a tall pointed-arch tracery window and smaller arched windows with rounded hood moulds.
Liudger founded Werden Abbey around 799–800 and had a first church, the Salvatorkirche, built between 800 and 808; he was buried in 809 in a chamber beside it. Abbot Altfried enlarged the church in the 840s, incorporating the grave as a crypt, and the ring crypt of about 830/840 survives as the oldest of its kind in northern Germany. After a fire in 1256 the church was rebuilt as a three-aisled basilica modelled on St. Quirin in Neuss, consecrated in 1275 by Albertus Magnus. Werden Abbey was secularised in 1803, and in 1993 the church became a minor basilica.
The crypt holds the relics of six bishops venerated as saints in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, among them Liudger and Altfried of Münster. Pilgrims come from the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, not only from Germany. The treasury, reopened in 2009 after a year of repairs, keeps over 90 works of art.
The basilica is located in the Werden neighborhood and is easy to reach on foot, with regular opening hours for visitors. Visitors should dress respectfully and be mindful that the church remains an active place of worship.
The church treasury, reopened in 2009 after a year of repairs, holds more than 90 works of art. The crypt beneath the church contains the relics of six bishops venerated as saints in both the Catholic and the Russian Orthodox churches, among them Liudger and Altfried of Münster.
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