Sankt Laurentii Church Tower

The Sankt Laurentii Church Tower is a striking medieval relic in the centre of Roskilde — a tall Romanesque brick tower that stands alone, the last remnant of a parish church demolished after the Reformation. When the church was pulled down in the 16th century, the tower was left standing, perhaps as a landmark or perhaps simply because it was too solid to bother removing.

The tower is visible from the main shopping street and makes an arresting sight — a medieval structure in the middle of an ordinary town centre, with no church attached. It's a good illustration of how dramatically Roskilde shrank after it lost its status as the Danish capital: at its medieval peak the town had at least seven churches; today the tower is one of the few physical reminders of most of them.

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All that remains of Sankt Laurentii Church — once one of Roskilde's principal medieval parish churches — is a single brick tower that now stands isolated in the town centre like a punctuation mark from the past. The church itself was demolished in the 16th century during the Reformation, when Roskilde's declining population no longer needed all its medieval churches.