Heilig-Geist-Spital
Heilig-Geist-Spital stands in Mainz beside the former Rhine riverbank, where a late Romanesque hospital building rises in red sandstone. Its cubic form carries a hipped roof, round-arched windows and stepped portals on all four sides. Founded in 1236, the civic hospital cared for elderly people, the poor and the sick. A Rhine-facing entrance once allowed access even when Mainz’s city gates were closed.
The building began as a charitable foundation modelled on Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, then passed between municipal and church control. Gothic alterations replaced Romanesque windows and reshaped the original seven-nave ground-floor hall. Later centuries brought uses as a retirement home, warehouse, correctional facility, gymnasium and dance hall. Restoration in 1975 removed many Gothic additions, while further work in 1999 supported its protected-monument status.
Today, the ground floor contains a restaurant, while the upper floor serves Schlaraffia Moguntia. Three naves now occupy the lower hall. The former chapel’s apse survives as a small choir projecting from the eastern façade.
- City
- Mainz
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myTuur is a free city-guide app. Its tours are built from spots, and each spot carries a story that starts when you get there, to read or to listen to as you like.