Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen

On 17 May 1529, the city resolved to merge its two old churches into one: to the west, St Gertrude's, an 11th-century church of the salt guild; to the east, St Mary's, a 12th-century church of the merchant guild. The old naves were torn down, the two pairs of towers were kept, and a new nave was raised between them, built in two phases — 1530–1539 and 1542–1554 — and completed by Nickel Hoffmann.

The project had originally been launched by Cardinal Albrecht to hold back the Reformation. Halfway through construction, Halle changed sides in 1541; by the time the church was finished, it was already Protestant. Its four towers stand apart, joined only by a watchman's bridge between the twin Hausmannstürme on the east side; together with the Roter Turm, they give Halle its name as the “city of five towers.”

Between 5 August 1545 and 26 January 1546, Luther preached here three times — the last time because thawing ice on the Saale trapped him in the city, and he simply climbed into the pulpit where he stood. On the night of 20 February 1546, his coffin lay in the old sacristy; a wax death mask and hand casts, reputedly taken at his deathbed, are still displayed today in a glass case in the tower. Whether Luther actually used the sandstone pulpit from the Hoffmann workshop that still stands in the church is disputed in the sources, and remains an open question.

Handel was born in Halle on 23 February 1685 and baptized here the very next day; he later trained under the church's organist, Zachow. The smaller east organ is the 1664 Reichel organ — the very instrument the young Handel learned on, still in place today. The larger west organ has a case dating to 1716, whose completion J. S. Bach helped inspect, though its inner mechanism was entirely rebuilt in 1984.

This church never became a museum. Since 1981 it has hosted a “Ten Days of Peace”; on the evening of 9 October 1989, the peace prayers held here moved out into the square, at real cost. Today, its congregation still gathers, and Handel's bronze statue stands in the square outside. In this same city, we worship in Chinese — worshipping the very same God.