Berlin - Nikolaikirche

Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas Church) is the oldest intact church building in Berlin's historic center. Deconsecrated in 1938, the church has been a museum belonging to the Berlin City Museum Foundation since the late 1990s, where concerts are also regularly held.

The present church dates back to at least two predecessor buildings. The first was built around 1230 and corresponded to the regional type of a late Romanesque, 40-meter-long, three-aisled pillar basilica.

The name of the church and its associated parish goes back to Saint Nicholas of Myra. The patronage of Saint Nicholas indicates that it was the church of a merchant settlement. As the oldest building in Berlin, it formed the core of the developing trading city of Berlin, while on the opposite bank of the Spree, the settlement of Kölln grew around St. Peter's Church.

Around 1270, the nave of the basilica was demolished and converted into a three-aisled early Gothic brick hall. Work began before 1379 on replacing the late Romanesque choir of the original building with a significantly expanded ambulatory choir. The floor plan of the choir with the ambulatory is based on the model built in the 1360s, the St. Nicholas Church in nearby Spandau – which in turn was based on St. Sebald in Nuremberg.

After the city fire of 1380, a comprehensive new construction as a late Gothic hall church took place by around 1470. The five-bay nave was given a new ambulatory choir.

After the Berlin Reformation of 1539, around 150 hereditary burials for Berlin statesmen, scholars, and wealthy citizens were created in the choir and side aisle niches.

In the years 1876–1878, Hermann Blankenstein restored the main church building and, again preserving the early Gothic basement, had the neo-Gothic double spire added.

In 1944, before the end of the war, the spires, roof, and part of the vault collapsed after air raids. Further damage was caused by a fire inside the church at the end of the war, followed by years of weathering and looting by thieves.

The Evangelical Church of the GDR was unable to raise the funds for reconstruction. Since the state also refused to contribute, the church ruins were transferred to the city of Berlin in 1969. The widely feared demolition of the ruins was finally abandoned by the GDR government in 1978, when it began planning what would later become the Nikolaiviertel district.