Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers — church building
Ermell · CC BY-SA 4.0

Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers

Basilika Vierzehnheiligen

  • 2 min read
  • 50.116° N 11.054° E

Interesting facts

  • One court architect proposed a church 100 metres long and 80 metres high that would have dwarfed almost every church of the German Baroque, but the plan was rejected.
  • The prince-bishop blamed the misplaced foundations on the first architect being a Protestant, unfamiliar with the needs of a Catholic pilgrimage church.
  • Balthasar Neumann died in 1753, long before the vaults were built, and his pupil Johann Thomas Nissler completed them largely on experience rather than exact calculation.
  • The vault shell was designed to be only about 12 centimetres thick, and few believed it would last, yet it survived even a devastating fire.
  • In 1835 lightning set the church ablaze, destroying the organ, roof and both towers, and the building stood roofless for about two years.
  • Twelve of the Fourteen Holy Helpers stand on the central altar in three tiers facing the four points of the compass; Barbara and Catherine have side altars of their own.
  • Earlier chapels on the site were wrecked twice, during the Peasants' War of 1525 and again in the Thirty Years' War.
  • After secularisation in 1803 the church treasures were sold off, the largest bells were taken down, and pilgrimages were for a time banned.
  • A Latin inscription over the main door addresses each visitor as a wayfarer and invites them inside to pray for the living and the dead.
  • When Pope Leo XIII made it a minor basilica in 1897, it was only the second church in the German Empire to receive that rank.

Why it is worth it

Above the valley of the Main in Upper Franconia, a tall twin-towered sandstone façade glows golden against the wooded hillside; inside, the church opens into a bright, flowing space of white, gold and pastel, with a free-standing altar in the middle of the nave like a coral reef of stucco and statues. The Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, known in German as Vierzehnheiligen, is one of the great masterpieces of the late Baroque and Rococo in Europe, and its interior has been nicknamed "God's ballroom".

The pilgrimage goes back to a legend. Local tradition holds that in September 1445 a young shepherd from the nearby Cistercian abbey of Langheim, Hermann Leicht, saw a weeping child in a field, and that on a later appearance the child came with fourteen companions who named themselves the Fourteen Holy Helpers — saints invoked in times of need — and asked for a chapel to be built. When a gravely ill woman recovered after praying to them, pilgrims began to come. The present church was commissioned by Langheim Abbey; ground was broken in April 1743. The first architect, Gottfried Heinrich Krohne, moved the building eastwards from its intended position, so that the spot of the apparition no longer lay under the crossing as planned. Balthasar Neumann, brought in to rescue the project, turned the mistake into a stroke of genius: he designed the interior as a sequence of interlocking ovals and set the Altar of Mercy freely in the centre of the nave, over the very place of the vision.

Building and decoration took nearly three decades. The stucco work is by Johann Michael Feichtmayr the Younger and the ceiling frescoes by Giuseppe Appiani, and the church was consecrated in September 1772. The towers rise to 75 metres. Across the valley stands Banz Abbey, and the two hilltop monuments together are known as the "Golden Gate" of Franconia. The church was raised to a minor basilica in 1897, and since 1839 Franciscan friars have looked after the pilgrimage.

Getting there

Vierzehnheiligen stands on a hillside between Bad Staffelstein and Lichtenfels in Upper Franconia, Bavaria, about 3.4 km from the centre of Lichtenfels. Bamberg lies to the south. The nearest international airport is Nuremberg Airport (NUE), about 69 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Bavaria 22The Most Beautiful Places in Germany 87The Most Beautiful Churches in Germany 11The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Germany 14The Most Beautiful Churches 186The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers is a church located near the town of Bad Staffelstein near Bamberg, in Bavaria, southern Germany. The late Baroque (Rococo) basilica, designed by Balthasar Neumann, was constructed between 1743 and 1772. It is dedicated to the Fourteen Holy Helpers, a group of saints venerated together in the Catholic Church, especially in Germany at the time of the Black Death. The interior has been nicknamed "God's Ballroom".

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