The Trinity Church was built between 1701 and 1717, in the years after French troops burned much of Speyer to the ground in 1689. That destruction — part of Louis XIV's deliberate policy of devastating the Rhineland — left the city with the unusual opportunity to rebuild a Protestant church in the then-current style, which meant Baroque. The result is one of the best examples of German Baroque Protestant church architecture in the region.
The interior is the reason to come. Instead of the soaring height of Catholic Baroque, the space is organised to pack in as many worshippers as possible: painted wooden gallery seating rises in several tiers along all four walls, with painted fronts showing biblical scenes in warm ochres and greens. The ceiling is painted too, and the overall effect is more theatre than church — deliberately so, since the Protestant tradition puts the sermon at the centre, not the altar, and the galleries ensure that everyone can hear and see the preacher. It is a completely different spatial logic from the cathedral a few streets away, and the contrast is instructive. Both are worth seeing; seeing both on the same day makes each more interesting.