Basilica of Saint Castor

This church is worth seeing for the historical events that have occurred in it, its extensive Romanesque construction and its largely traditional furnishings.

Since 2002, the Basilica of Saint Castor has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley.

The church honours Saint Castor, who is said to have worked as a missionary on the Moselle in the 4th century and to have founded a religious community in Karden.

In 836 the church was ordained as a Carolingian hall with a rectangular chancel, but it was extended later in the 9th century with a transept with a semicircular apse.

A cella memoriae (Latin for a small building over a grave which is dedicated to the memory of the deceased) was built in front of the choir as a chapel-like burial vault connected with the church by a circular crypt.

Probably originating at the same time were the two side aisles of the nave and the lower part of the west end the building (the entrance).

In 1138, Conrad III, the first Hohenstaufen was elected by an assembly of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire at St Castor's.

Saint Castor's was damaged in the battle of 1199 between Otto IV and Philip of Swabia in the dry bed of the Moselle near Koblenz.

In 1110, the Archbishop of Trier, Bruno of Lauffen founded a hospital in Koblenz next to Saint Castor's, one of the first institutions for nursing north of the Alps.

Archbishop Theodoric of Wied in 1216 invited the Teutonic Knights to Koblenz and gave them part of the site of Saint Castor's along with the hospital of St. Nicholas located there.

Soon after the Deutschherrenhaus was established close by at Deutsches Eck, where the Moselle flows into the Rhine, to manage the order's Koblenz bailiwick (Ballei).

Under the leadership of the Prussian inspector of buildings, Johann Claudius von Lassaulx a complete restoration of the interior began in 1830, which soon came to a standstill due to lack of money.

As a result of a legacy of the dean Edmund Bausch and a gift of King Frederick William IV the restoration was carried out from 1848 to 1849.

Since 1812, the square in front of Saint Castor's has been the location of a fountain called Kastorbrunnen, which has a humorous comment referring to the Napoleonic wars, which also affected Koblenz.