The tower, nave and chancel are of brick. Later a two-storey porch was added to the north side of the nave, and a sacristy to the east of the chancel. The tower stands on a high foundation of boulders. Between the buttresses of the nave and chancel there is one window each, with one blind window on either side of each window. The masonry of all parts of the church is Gothic. The nave consists of three bays. Pulpit of 1684 by Christian Klodsey. Above the triumphal arch in the chancel hung a helmet, gauntlets, spurs, a sword and other knightly accoutrements. The von Oppen coat of arms adorned the knightly equipment. In the churchyard next to the church was the grave, with a granite stone, of the minister of state Heinrich Theodor von Schön (1773–1836).
In the atheist post-war years the church was used as a storehouse. The tower stood without a roof, having been partly destroyed, apparently as early as 1945. A gouge left by a shell hit in the south-eastern part of the chancel was a reminder that it had come under fire.
The old roof of the chancel and nave did not survive and was rebuilt about half as high. A square doorway was knocked through in the sacristy added on the east. The north porch was destroyed; of its two storeys only one remained. An 18th-century tombstone was fixed to the northern buttress of the tower. In 1988 it was still hanging there, but by 1989 it had been torn off and lay on the ground, inscription down. Nothing remained of the cemetery that had surrounded the church. An asphalt road was laid along the north side, and to the south there was a fenced yard, also paved with asphalt.
From 1994 the church was handed over to the "Monuments of Königsberg" society to serve as a tourist centre.
In 2010 Arnau Church was handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Measurements were taken and preparations for restoration made. In 1998, restoration work began, funded by the German organisation Kuratorium Arnau.
In 2008 the church was transferred to the Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Art, but as early as mid-2010 it changed hands again, passing to the Kaliningrad Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, after which a parish dedicated to the Great Martyr Catherine was established in it, and in 2019 a convent dedicated to the same saint.
Photos of the lost medieval frescoes of Arnau Church can be seen on the website of the Deutsche Fotothek.
Photos: Bildarchiv Ostpreußen;
Anton Ulbrich «Geschichte der Bildhauerkunst in Ostpreussen»;
Mikhail Ogorodnikov (2016).
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
