Sankt-Sylvester-Kapelle

Sankt-Sylvester-Kapelle stands west of Überlingen, close to Lake Constance, as a small pre-Romanesque church building. Its plain structure reflects early medieval architecture and its setting beside the lake.

Count Alpger founded the chapel around 840, and monks from Reichenau decorated its interior with Carolingian wall paintings. A colourful meander band creates an early sense of perspective across the surviving decoration. In the early tenth century, an enlargement brought new Ottonian frescoes, showing scenes from Jesus’s life, Christ, and the twelve apostles. Above the chancel arch, Winidhere and Hiltepurg appear as donors who commissioned the work. A fragmentary dedication inscription preserves a poem by the Reichenau abbot Walahfrid Strabo, linking this quiet church with medieval scholarship.

Later alterations covered the paintings repeatedly between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, leaving them in poor condition. Restoration between 1992 and 1995 secured the murals as far as possible in their current state. The donor portraits remain among the oldest surviving examples of their kind.