Alte Kirche Wellinghofen

Alte Kirche Wellinghofen stands in Dortmund’s Wellinghofen district as a Romanesque church with roots reaching the ninth century. Its present form combines a hall church, a historic tower and walls shaped by repeated rebuilding. Medieval frescoes, restored in 1978, bring traces of its earlier interior into view.

Renovations in 1977 uncovered foundations from a late Carolingian hall with a rectangular choir. Fire probably destroyed that building during the twelfth century. A Romanesque cross-vaulted church followed, with three eastern apses and a tower likely dating from the same period. In the fourteenth century, builders converted the structure into a hall church. Medieval pilgrims also used this place as a resting point on their way to Syburg.

A Gothic sacrament house stands beside a baptismal font described as a thousand years old. Geometric windows by Wilhelm Buschulte use very little colour. The tower holds four bells, including a thirteenth-century bell considered one of Westphalia’s oldest. An organ first built by Johann Georg Alberti in 1709 preserves another layer of the church’s musical history.