St. Martin's Church

St. Martin's Church in Sindelfingen, built between 1066 and 1132, is one of the oldest and most important Romanesque churches in southwest Germany.

Count Adalbert II of Calw had St. Martin's Church built as a three-aisled basilica with a high choir and crypt (lower church) for the canon monastery he founded in 1066. A consecration is recorded for 1083. The tower was originally exposed. Wooden parts used in it were dated to 1084/85. The crypt was consecrated in 1100, the roof truss was completed in 1132 at the latest and the sacristy was rebuilt in 1270. The collegiate church was always also the parish church for Sindelfingen. No church was built within the town walls. After the Reformation in 1576/77, the high choir was demolished and the crypt was leveled. The Romanesque St. Michael's Chapel on the south side of the church was demolished during the restoration of St. Martin's Church by Christian Friedrich von Leins in 1863-69. At that time, the church's post-medieval furnishings were removed. The sandstone relief from 1477 with portraits of Eberhard im Bart and his mother Mechthild von der Pfalz commemorating the transfer of the monastery to Tübingen and the settlement of the Augustinian canons is worthy of note.

In 1925, the masonry was exposed by removing the exterior plaster. The three-nave structure of the interior is continued in the three choir apses. Their walls are divided on the outside by round arches. Similar wall designs can be found in Romanesque churches in Lombardy (Como province). The small, now bricked-up windows in the lower part of the wall used to illuminate the crypt (lower church), which was removed after the Reformation in 1576/77. Two gravestones or memorial plaques (from 1590 and 1676) were probably walled into the wall of the left (southern) apse during the renovation in 1863-68. On the right-hand (northern) apse, an entrance that was broken into in 1576 and has since been bricked up again can be seen. To the right of the choir is the sacristy, which was renovated in 1270 and has three unusually narrow Gothic lancet windows.