Nikolaikirche

The Nikolaikirche stands immediately adjacent to the Lower Castle in the heart of Siegen's old town. It is a Protestant church built on an unusual circular plan, making it one of the more architecturally distinctive churches in North Rhine-Westphalia. The tower was added in later centuries and doesn't match the rotunda below, but the combination gives the building a pleasingly eccentric silhouette.

The interior is modest by the standards of major German churches, but the round plan creates a different spatial experience from the conventional nave-and-aisles arrangement. A few medieval features survive alongside the more austere Protestant furnishings added after the Reformation. The church is usually open to visitors during daylight hours. The square in front of it and the Lower Castle is pleasant to sit in, and the Kroenchen tower of the castle provides an excellent photography backdrop from this angle.

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A story
The Nikolaikirche is unusual in German church architecture: it is a round church, built in the 12th century on a circular plan derived from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The round form was favoured by the Crusader knights who sometimes commissioned copies of Jerusalem's most sacred church in their home territories. The original Romanesque structure has been modified several times, but the circular ground plan remains intact and gives the interior a distinctive spatial quality.