It receives 1–3 million guests annually, making it among the most visited churches in Germany.

The church was planned as the burial place of the Electors of the Palatinate and as a representative church of the Palatinate royal seat. In the Palatine War of Succession, the princely graves of the Electors were destroyed; today only the grave of the founder of the church, Elector Ruprecht III, remains. The church was also the location of the founding of the Heidelberg University and was the original repository of the Bibliotheca Palatina.

The congregation was originally Roman Catholic, but the church has changed denominations more than ten times through its history. Intermittently, over a 300-year period, the nave and the choir of the church were separated by a wall, allowing both Catholics and Protestants to practice in the church at the same time.

The wall was ultimately removed in 1936, and the congregation is now solely Protestant. Today, it is a parish church within the Evangelical Church of Heidelberg and is part of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

History
A manuscript from 1239 references a Romanesque chapel in the center of Heidelberg named “Zum Heilien Geist”. A Gothic, asisleless church was constructed on that site around 1300 and subsequently referred to as the Chapel of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkapelle). King Rupert commissioned a new church building in 1398, which replaced the chapel and became the current Church of the Holy Spirit. The current church is the third sacral building on the site.