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St Mary's Church

St Mary's Church

Photo: Olaf Meister · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Bergen, Norway
Client / Owner
The king and the citizens of Bergen
Year
Completed 1130
Access
Public
Typology
Spiritual

St Mary's Church in Bergen was built from the 1130s or 1140s until around 1180, and the king and the citizens and merchants of Bergen jointly commissioned it. The article describes a Romanesque long church with some Gothic influence in the eastern choir. It has two towers and three naves, and it is built mainly of soapstone, with the oldest parts in the highest-quality stone.

The 1198 town fire damaged it, and the 1248 fire did greater harm. Afterward the towers were heightened and the chancel lengthened. The German population took it over in 1408, and sermons were held in German until after World War I. It became an ordinary parish church again in 1874.

The church served as a polling station in 1814 for the Norwegian Constituent Assembly. It closed from 2010 to 2015 for major restoration, and it is automatically protected.

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