City church of St. Peter and Paul

St. Peter’s Church, which rises on a visual axis with the town hall and castle at the highest point of the town, is documented from around 1180. It was a three-aisled Romanesque columned basilica. Although the Order of St. John is only mentioned for the first time in 1234 in connection with the granting of fishing rights in Weißensee, it was certainly active there long before that. If you look at the gable end of the church from the market square, the original dimensions of the predecessor building of the present church are still clearly visible in the wall structure. The Order of St. John received the patronage rights in 1253 and around 1300 the town church is also mentioned as a monastery church of the Knights of St. John. The Knights of St. John had established their administrative center in Thuringia in Weißensee, a town that was a place of supreme courtly power due to the presence of the landgrave’s castle.
From the 14th century, St. Peter’s had the status of a cathedral and in 1463 the church also received the patronage of St. Paul and has been the church of St. Peter and Paul ever since.