The church was built on the Hellweg, a main Medieval road connecting the free imperial town Dortmund with others. Historians suspect that the visits of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and his son Henry VI to the Imperial Palace in Dortmund led to the construction of the Marienkirche.

It was erected between 1170 and 1200 to serve the town's council and jurisdiction. It is the oldest extant church in Dortmund's inner city. Around 1350, a choir in Gothic architecture was built. It served as a model for the Reinoldikirche, which was built opposite of the road.

The church was destroyed in World War II, but rebuilt.


Marienaltar

The altar created by Conrad von Soest (1370 - 1422) around 1420 is considered a masterpiece of the late Gothic period. The triptych is the latest known work of the painter, which he completed shortly before his death.

The altar is preserved only as a fragment. The pictures belonged to a Gothic winged altar. In order to fit the panels into a Baroque altar structure about 16 meters high, they were trimmed in 1720. In the carved baroque altar the paintings were arranged differently. At the lower edge, the panels were painted over with banners about 20 cm high. In 1848, the back was covered with newspaper to protect it from final destruction.

In 1926, on the occasion of a restoration, the outer panels were to be sawed off. For an exhibition in Cologne, the parish had made the altar available. The curator of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne then proposed a deal to the parish: The museum wanted to take over the complete restoration and in return detach and keep the outer panels. The parish turned that down.

During WWII, the baroque high altar was destroyed in a bombing raid but the panels had been removed and thus were saved.

In 1957, the paintings were placed in modern metal frames and in their original order.

Since 1920, art historians suspected that the altarpiece was the work of Conrad von Soest. The exact attribution could only be made in 1950, when a signature of the master hidden in a detail of the painting was discovered. In the middle painting, behind Mary's deathbed is a table with a book whose clasps open the pages slightly. Four upside-down letters can be seen, which can be interpreted as an abbreviation for Conrad von Soest.