St Hedwigs-Kathedrale Berlin


This copper-domed church (1773) was commissioned by Frederick the Great, designed by Knobelsdorff, modelled after the Pantheon in Rome and named for the patron saint of Silesia. It was Berlin's first post-Reformation Catholic church and remained the only one until 1854.

Restored after WWII, its circular, modern interior is lidded by a ribbed dome and accented with Gothic sculpture and an altar cross made of gilded and enamel-decorated ivory. In the crypt lie the remains of Bernard Lichtenberg, the parish priest who turned St Hedwig's into a centre of Catholic Nazi resistance. He died en route to the Dachau concentration camp in 1943 and was beatified in 1996.


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