St.-Georgen-Kirche Wismar

Three centuries went into St Georgen. Begun around 1295 as a hall church, rebuilt in the fourteenth century as a basilica with a three-aisled choir, it was finished only in 1594 — the largest and the last of Wismar's three great brick-Gothic churches, seventy-eight metres long, its vaults thirty-five metres above the floor. British bombing on the nights of 14 and 15 April 1945 burned out the tower, brought down vaulting and destroyed the organ; the outer walls held. A storm in January 1990 forced the question of the ruin, and reconstruction began that year: the essential work was complete by 2010, at a cost by 2017 of some forty-three million euros, much of it from the German Foundation for Monument Protection. A viewing platform opened on the tower stump in 2014. The church now serves both worship and music, and touring vocal programmes have been heard beneath its vaults.