Alte Nikolaikirche

Almost everything on the Römerberg is a reconstruction. This little red sandstone church is not. While the bombing of March 22, 1944, destroyed the Old Town around it, the Alte Nikolaikirche came through with only minor damage, which makes it the most genuinely old thing on Frankfurt's most famous square.

It carries 51 bells. Four ring for services and 47 form a carillon, and if you are standing on the Römerberg when it plays, the sound is the closest thing Frankfurt has to a signature. The church stands directly opposite the Römer city hall, which is not a coincidence: from the 15th century it served as the city council's chapel.

Archaeological work in 1988 and 1989 showed the building went up in three phases. A small church with a nearly square foundation probably stood here in the 11th or 12th century, a tower was added in the mid-13th century, and the choir and sanctuary were extended at the end of that century. The current building took its shape in the mid-15th century. Wall remains suggest an earlier Romanesque church that may have served the imperial palace next door.

For a while a watchman lived in the tower, and his job was to announce the arrival and departure of ships on the Main. The church's fortunes swung hard after that: closed at the Reformation and used as a warehouse, restored and reopened for services in 1721, used as a garrison church in the 19th century, closed again in 1813 and turned back into a warehouse. It became home to the Paulus congregation in 1949, after the Paulskirche was handed to the city, and a full renovation completed in April 1992 added a cellar, a new organ and a movable altar.

The three-aisled interior is roofed with cross vaults, and the central keystone shows Bishop Nicholas, the church's patron, who was invoked against the dangers of water. On a church this close to the Main, that was a practical choice as much as a devotional one. Two gravestones on the south wall, completed around 1410, commemorate Frankfurt's first mayor, Siegfried zum Paradeis, remembered for acquiring the land that became the city forest, and his second wife Katharina zum Wedel.

The red sandstone sculpture on the southeast wall shows Christ as the Man of Sorrows, a copy of a 1370 original now in the Historisches Museum. The sanctuary and choir windows are by the Frankfurt artist Lina von Schauroth. The swallow's-nest organ of 1992, built of Spessart oak, has 23 stops, 1,598 pipes and 25 chimes.

The reason to step inside is simple. This is the one church in the middle of the tourist crush that keeps its doors open all day to anyone, visitors and residents alike, as a quiet room in a very busy square.