Saint Peter's Church of Achen en Moselle

Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The church of Saint-Pierre d'Achen, located in the Moselle department (Great East Region), is a religious building built in 1728 and enlarged choir side in 1778. Dedicated to St Peter, it was under the snack of the Cistercian abbey of Sturzelbronn until 1621 and served as a mother church in the nearby parishes of Etting and Kalhausen. His parish history dates back to the archiprired of Hornbach (Diocese of Metz), before his attachment to that of Rohrbach in 1804.

The church furniture includes a baroque high altar (1771), the work of stucator André Moosbrugger, the only surviving of the 1966s. Made of artificial marble and gold, it houses a statue of Saint Peter framed by Saint Lucia and Saint Paul. The altarpiece, with composite columns and concave pediment, illustrates the influence of Vorarlberge artisans (Moosbrugger family), active in the region in the eighteenth century. The tabernacle, the oldest thirty years old, would come from the former high altar.

Other remarkable features include 18th-century baptismal fonts in pink and grey sandstone, adorned with a rare sculpted half-relief baptism scene. The current organ, installed in 1985, is the work of the Muhleisen Manufacture. These elements bear witness to the artistic and liturgical evolution of the building, marked by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (the 1960s).

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