The Neuwerk was built between 1186 and 1218 for a community of Cistercian nuns and survives almost unchanged, including the choir frescoes — flat-faced saints in red and ochre — that most German Romanesque churches lost to whitewash during the Reformation. The west front, with its two square towers and rose window, is the photograph; the inside, sober and barrel-vaulted, is the substance.
The convent itself was suppressed in the seventeenth century but the gardens around the church survived and are now an unenclosed public park. In summer the rose beds along the apse make this corner of Goslar one of the prettiest, and easily missed from the main tourist circuit a few minutes to the south.