The monument on Petersberg

When it was built, the pillar basilica with its three naves was one of the most innovative buildings of its time, renowned for its high-quality masonry. It was erected from 1103 to 1147, stacking horizontal layers of precision-cut blocks of stone. Construction works for the “paradise” (the antechurch) and the four towers continued through the first half of the 13th century. Today it still shows the impact of war damage and brutish conversion works: In the first quarter of the 19^th century, the St. Peter and Paul monastery church was turned into a storage depot of the Prussian army.

Despite its enormous structural loss, the basilica is still the most monumental example of Romanic sacral architecture preserved in Thuringia today.

Now that the facades are restored and the wooden floors of the former army depot were removed from the central nave, the impressive Roman building has regained some its former dignity and grandeur.