St. Josef

St. Josef stands in Düsseldorf-Rath as a Catholic parish church and neoromanesque basilica, completed in 1909. Its three aisles and transept form a cross-shaped plan beneath a facade with twin towers and a porch. The four-storey towers rise 45 metres, while an octagonal tower marks the crossing above the building.

Düsseldorf architect Josef Kleesattel designed the church with Maria Laach Abbey in the Eifel as an inspiration. Rath’s growing industrial population prompted an earlier Romanesque church in 1898, followed by an independent parish in 1903 and the basilica’s foundation stone in 1905. An air raid in 1944 destroyed much of Heinrich Nüttgens’s interior decoration, although the four archangels at the crossing survived. Reconstruction continued until 1955, restoring the exterior while simplifying the interior, and a further restoration took place from 1972 to 1981.

Inside, the nave carries a ribbed vault and the side aisles have square vaults, while the transept combines single-arched windows with a large round window. Five bells cast in 1909 survived both World Wars, and their combined weight reaches 7,056 kilograms.