St Maurice's church, Gothic church in Soultz-Haut-Rhin, France.
Saint Maurice is the medieval parish church of Soultz-Haut-Rhin, built of reddish-brown stone with a crossing tower rising 66 metres to a slate spire. Its plan is a Latin cross with a central nave and two aisles; the transept vaults reach 17.30 metres. The tower carries a clock face, a painted sundial dated 1755 and a scratch dial.
Begun in 1270 on the site of an 11th-century Romanesque church whose remains were uncovered by archaeologists in the 1990s, the church had its transept finished before 1310 and its nave around 1340. A western bay was added in 1489 because the building had become too small for the town's population, and the top of the spire dates from 1611.
The church lost most of its original furnishings in the French Revolution. What remains includes a wooden relief of Saint George and the Dragon (c. 1480–1490), a Madonna and Child statue (c. 1500), and an 1855 Entombment painting given by Napoleon III in 1864. The painted sundial of 1755 and a scratch dial are on the tower.
The church stands in the centre of Soultz-Haut-Rhin, in the Haut-Rhin department. Visitors enter through the southern portal, whose 14th-century tympanum is best seen in raking morning light. Inside, the transept vaults rise to 17.30 m, so the frescos and the 1750 Silbermann organ are easier to make out with daylight coming through the windows.
The south portal keeps its tympanum from around 1320, carved with Saint Maurice on horseback and the Adoration of the Magi. It may be the work of masters from Thann, a town nearby. The crossing tower reaches 66 m including the sun-shaped weather vane, and carries a painted sundial dated 1755.
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