Stadtkirche Aarau

As early as the 6th century, a church must have been on Aarauer Boden. The excavated 1.5m thick foundation wall enclosed an east-facing church space. The tombs discovered nearby confirm the importance of this early Christian place of worship. In its meaning it was replaced by the parishes of Suhr and Kirchberg in Küttigen and abandoned the building.Thus, the first Aarau town church of the parish of Suhr, as a papal tithe tax from the year 1275 occupied. Thanks to the ground soundings made in 1939 on the occasion of the interior renovation of the town church, we can get a picture of the predecessor building. It was a single-nave church with a northeast-facing, three-sided closed choir.At least since 1426 it was flanked by a tower and served the Aarau population until 1471 as a church.This year, the priest John of Gundeldingen and the foreman Sebastian Gisel von Laufen began the construction of the present church. The tower of the previous church remained and was included in the new building. The Constance Auxiliary Bishop consecrated the church in July 1479 with its twelve altars in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.Numerous changes were to characterize the new and for the then Aarau large church in the next five hundred years: The Reformation with its command of the imageless church space, the age of plaster plaster in the 18th century and finally the form-rich Gothic Revival in the last century left their mark. The shape and function of the tower, which dates back to the predecessor building, also changed: the former Aarauer foreman Simon Erismann von Staffelbach raised it in 1663 and blinded the two baroque gables to the cheese bite. At the same time, the first tower clock was installed.The church was greatly enriched in 1756 with the organ donated by Bern. She first came to stand on the rood screen until she got her place on the west gallery in 1891.