I have more than just door photos this week. The interior of St Martin Parish Church in Garmisch-Partenkirchen is too beautiful not to share. I walked through it with my mouth open when I visited a few weeks ago.

And I have a little history to tell as well.

Early in the 18th century the old St Martin Parish Church had become too small. The residents of Garmisch decided, together with their pastor, Marquad Schmid, to construct a new church to be located in the new urban centre. They chose the location of Niklasanger and tore down a church that was already situated there.

Josef Schmuzer of Wessobrunn was selected to construct the building and provide the stucco works. He erected a nave with four bays having a length of 44 metres and a width of 14.5 metres. The easterly side with its lateral chapels is suggestive of a transept.

Matthäus Günther painted scenes from the life of St Martin on six panels on the Bohemian style cupolas which are organised around double traverse arches and double pilasters. The new church was consecrated on September 23 1734.

The five altars guide us through three stylistic epochs: in the centre of the Baroque style main altar we find the depiction of the parting of the mantle of St Martin (per A. van Dyck) created by Martin Speer.

The expressive Apostle Princes and the Trumpet Angels on the upper woodwork were created by the sculptor Anton Sturm.

The lateral altars, which were created only twenty years later, express the Rococo style, just as the pulpit, which was designed by the Tyrolean sculptor Franz Hosp.

The altars in the lateral chapels however, represent the purity of the Classicism period.

In 1958 the tower received an 8 fold bronze bell system from the Erding foundry Czudnochowsky. The organ builder Gerard Schmid integrated a Baroque style organ with 29 stops in the original console. The Church was roofed with shingles during the renovations which began in 2009.

The doors are quite simple in comparison to the rest of the church, and there’s only four of them..

I’ll be back next Thursday with some more doors and beautiful buildings from Garmisch.

Thursday Doors is a weekly challenge for people who love doors and architecture to come together to admire and share their favourite door photos, drawings, or other images or stories from around the world. If you’d like to join in and create your own Thursday Doors post each (or any) week, visit nofacilities.com for more information.

Thank you for calling in today! Before you go…

Would you like a peek inside the pages of my fictional novel? It might just be your cup of tea!

Set in a gossipy small town in Ireland at a time when marriage is for keeps and sexuality is repressed, Secrets in the Babby House is a family saga over three decades that starts in 1956. It is a story of love, deception, and stolen diaries filled with sins and secrets.