St. Michael’s Church is situated at the Western rim of the city centre of Hildesheim, on the so-called Michaelishügel (“St. Michael’s Hill”). The main entrance to the Church is on the south side. Magdalenengarten, a baroque park, is very close to the church in the west. The cloister is also accessible from there. It leads to the Church’s contemporary (administrative) buildings. From the south and east of the Hill is Hildesheim’s downtown, to the west is the River Innerste and in the north the Gymnasium Andreanum school.
St. Michael’s Church is a double-choir basilica with two tripartite transepts at either end of the nave and a square tower at each crossing. Along with these large towers at the crossings, there are four other tall and narrow towers attached to the small sides of the two transepts.
The eastern choir featured three apses, and the west choir is emphasized by a single apse rising high over an elaborate cross-vaulted crypt with an ambulatory. Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that St. Michael’s “is the earliest surviving example of a truly Romanesque exterior.”
The ground plan of the building follows a geometrical conception, in which the square of the transept crossing in the ground plan constitutes the key measuring unit for the entire church. The square units are defined by the alternation of columns and piers. Pevsner described this as a “more thorough ‘metrical system'” than found in any prior Romanesque architecture.
During his time as Otto’s tutor, it is recorded that Bernward visited Rome and lived there for a time. During this time abroad, Bernward would have taken notice to the Early Christian Basilicas in Rome which were notorious for their unexciting interiors at this time. Through the many architectural feats and intricacies found in the church such as the Tree of Jesse and the Bernward doors, we see the Bishop completely rejecting this practice of monotony previously found in many popular, current works.
The ceiling of the church is decorated with a painting, 27.6 m long and 8.7 m wide, depicting the Tree of Jesse, the ancestral line of Jesus. This artwork, created around 1130, was created using over 1,300 oak planks and was heavily restored to its current form in 2010.
The famous Bernward Doors, which feature bronze reliefs of scenes from the Bible, were most likely commissioned after 1008, and were originally ordered for St. Michael’s by Bernward but are now found at the nearby Cathedral of Hildesheim. These incredibly detailed doors depict 16 scenes in total and begin with scenes on the left with stories of Genesis and move into New Testament depictions on the right. The doors were crafted in this way to allow the viewer the opportunity to see the decline and Holy Redemption of humanity through Christ’s resurrection. Along with this, many of the stories depicted in the doors were almost certainly drawn from works Bernward himself encountered on his various travels.
