Church of St. Leodegar, Lucerne, Switzerland

The Church of St. Leodegar was built in parts from 1633 to 1639 on the foundation of the Roman basilica which had burnt in 1633. This church was one of the few built north of the Alps during the Thirty Years War and one of the largest and art history rich churches of the German late renaissance period.

In the 8th century there was already an abbey consecrated to Saint Maurice on the current site of the church, which had been donated by Pepin the Short, and was known at the time as the Monastarium Luciaria. By the 12th century the abbey was under the jurisdiction of the Murbach Abbey, whose patron saint was St. Leodegar.

In 1291 the abbey was sold to the Habsburgs. In 1433 the city of Lucerne, no longer a member of the Eidgenossenschaft, took control of the abbey, and in 1455 it was converted from Benedictine to a “universal order” church.

The monastery experienced a heyday during the time of the reformation due to Luzern being a prominent city for the Swiss Catholic cantons. The papal nuncio, resident in Luzern, used the church as his cathedral during this time.

In 1874 the parish church of St. Leodegar was founded and with that the church became simultaneously a monastery church and parish church, as it is today.

References:

Wikipedia

Religious sites in Switzerland

User Reviews

Ankit Agarwal (12 months ago)
Beautiful church and well maintained. Looking at the building you can not image how old the church would be.

Nadir Malik (12 months ago)
Place is just like the picture below so i would recommend you to please visit it. Its worth going here!

Oleg Naumov (12 months ago)
Excellent monument of medieval culture and architecture. Unfortunately interiors are mostly baroque. Too few from original gothic left. Anyway it is worth your visit. Visitors are allowed to take non commercial photo without flash light and tripod.

Heidi Christina (13 months ago)
So beautiful. Picture perfect. A real piece of history so well maintained.

Steen _ (15 months ago)
Beautiful church. Went for a German mass, I only know a small amount of German but it was still easy to follow along. They announced at the end of mass that they are now starting an English spoken mass so if you are visiting Lucerne from an English country I’m sure you don’t want to miss that.

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Polybert49

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