Location: Neviges, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Architect: Gottfried Böhm
Completed: 1968

14 Photographs

When I tell non-architect friends about these journeys, sometimes way off the beaten path to look at often quite obscure buildings, they nearly always look at me rather quizzically, as if they can’t understand why I would devote my time to do such a thing. On those rare occasions that I take someone not otherwise inclined along, almost without fail they inevitably understand. Sometimes buildings are so special, so beautiful and so unique, that it is impossible not to be overcome by and to viscerally experience that power.

Maria, Königin des Friedens (The Pilgrimage Church of Neviges) is one of those buildings. Hidden away in an unassuming part of Germany, squeezed between narrow streets and tucked behind a bunch of things, it’s easily missed, even if you’re looking for it. The kind of building where you catch a glimpse over a roof top, around a corner, between a tree and a lamp post, like a leopard in the trees, hard to catch a glimpse of, let alone figure out what it is. Even from the piazza out front and up close, though utterly original, it does not really reveal its secrets.

It is only on entering the dark cool space, through the giant portal door, that you find yourself in another world, utterly transformed from the one outside, and impossible to describe in words. I love the pictures, especially these ones, but nothing beats standing in a building like this.

Most times, you visit a building only once, but other times, like with a garden, you want to see it in another light, another time of day or another season.

The pilgrimage church is like that, I’ll definitely be back.

HWLK