Old St. Nicholas Church
church building in Altstadt (Frankfurt/Main), Germany

The Old St. Nicholas Church (in German: Alte Nikolaikirche) in Frankfurt, Germany, is a medieval Lutheran church. It is located near the Römer city hall in Frankfurt's old town called Altstadt. It has 51 bells; 4 are used for peals and 47 are used for carillons. The first chapel on its site was built in the mid-12th century, the current in the mid-15th. Its congregation forms part of today's Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau, comprising Lutheran, Reformed and United Protestant congregations.
Despite major destruction in the surrounding old town owing to the bombing of Frankfurt am Main in World War II, the Old St Nicholas Church had only minor damage. Nearby, the Dom-Römer Project aims to bring back parts of the old town between the Römerberg square and Frankfurt Cathedral.
“Old St. Nicholas Church” enters the record as church building in Altstadt (Frankfurt/Main), Germany. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nicholas, Church and church can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Old St. Nicholas Church” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Nicholas, Church and church provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q436054. VIAF identifies the subject as 242666233. The Library of Congress control number is n92115245. Authority coordinates are 50.110, 8.682. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Old St. Nicholas Church” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.