St. John's Church, Bremen

[1] On the site of the modern church in the eastern part of the old city, in Schnoor, the Franciscans erected a monastery with a basilica in 1225.

The money for this came mostly from the many funerary endowments resulting from the Black Death in Europe, which killed seven thousand in Bremen.

At that point it became a retirement home, in which the possessors of prebends lived - citizens who had secured a permanent right of residence for themselves in exchange for a payment of a sum.

As a result, a large cellar was created, which was rented commercially in order to offset debt until 1992 when it became the crypt.

Raising the floor level of the church meant that the ceiling height is three metres lower than it used to be.

Only Catherine's Passage (Katharinenpassage) in the city centre testifies to the existence of the earlier Dominican monastery and its church of St Katherine.

St Paul's monastery in front of the city gates was destroyed in 1546 by military action.

The former St John's Abbey of the Franciscan order, which stood next to the church, no longer survives.

In 1965 a series of two-story red stone houses, designed by Bernhard Wessel for the Provost of St John (Propstei St. Johannis), were built at Hohe Straße 2-7/Franziskanerstraße 7 on the monastery grounds.