Chapel "Michelkirche"

The first church of Piesport was located above the village in the middle of the steep hill on the left bank of the Moselle River. According to church records dating from around 1350, it had the status of a "matrix ecclesia" (mother church for the surrounding villages).

In the Roman era, there was a shrine of the local God Mercurius Bigontius here, to whom the local ford across the River Moselle was consecrated. During the Christian era, it was replaced with a place of worship with Michael as its patron saint, a patronage transferred over to the parish church built on the banks of the River Moselle in 1776. In the following centuries, the old hillside church, first documented in 1295, increasingly lost its influence to the more centrally located church “Zu den 12 Aposteln” for practical reasons. Consequently, the latter was referred to as the main church in an inspection report dating from 1569. Subsequently, the patrocinium was transferred to St Sebastian, patron saint of the plague. Hence, the church is known as “Sebastianuskapelle” (St Sebastian Chapel) today. In spite of this, there is proof that at least until 1609, services in the old church - also with christenings - were upheld. Unfortunately, in the course of land consolidation measures of the 1990s, the area surrounding this ancient place of worship was changed so much that the remains of this chapel are in the middle of a vineyard today and there is nothing left of the old cemetery formerly surrounding the building. *Piesport features a total of three churches located at different sites down the centuries: - “Michelskirch” halfway up the hillside - “Kirche zu den 12 Aposteln” (Church of the 12 Apostles), known today as Sebastianuskapelle (Sebastian Chapel) at the vicarage - and the present-day parish church of St Michael sited on the banks of the River Moselle (rebuilt in 1776).