St. Paul's Chapter Church was built by Bishop Burchard (who also built the first Worms Cathedral) in 1002. It was originally a three-naved buttress basilica.
A Dominican monastery was added in 1226. Also in the 13th century, the stone dome-shaped tower roofs were added in the Byzantine style of Jerusalem's churches. These make the church a visible monument to the Crusades.
The Pauluskirche was desconsecrated and the monastery destroyed in 1797 in the interests of secularization. In the decades that followed, the church was used as a warehouse, a barn and finally as a municipal museum (1880).
In 1929, Dominican religious life began again here and is still an active community. The resident monks conduct services, prayers and confession, and some also work as hospital or prison chaplains. The Pauluskirche was badly damaged by bombing on February 21, 1945, but through the support of local citizens it was rebuilt and back in service in 1947.
The present nave of the Pauluskirche was rebuilt in the Baroque era, but the remainder of the building is 11th-century Romanesque.
The Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg is situated in a strategic area on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain, it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years' War when it was abandoned. From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II. Today it is a major tourist site, attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year.
The first records of a castle built by the Hohenstaufens date back to 1147. The fortress changed its name to Koenigsburg (royal castle) around 1157. The castle was handed over to the Tiersteins by the Habsburgs following its destruction in 1462. They rebuilt and enlarged it, installing a defensive system designed to withstand artillery fire.
The fortification work accomplished over the 15th century did not suffice to keep the Swedish artillery at bay during the Thirty Years War, and the defences were overrun.