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Started: ~1070 (11th century)

Location: Windsor, England

Outstanding features: A massive stone fortress combining defense and residence functions.

Historical meaning: Symbol of the Norman conquest of England and still a royal residence today.

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Year of Construction

Began: 1163

Essentially completed: 1345

Location (City + Country)

Paris, France 🇫🇷

Outstanding features

Notre-Dame de Paris is a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, famous for its:
– Twin bell towers
– Massive stained-glass rose windows
– Stone gargoyles and sculptures
– Pointed arches and flying buttresses

Historically:

it has served as a sacred stage for France’s most important royal, religious, and cultural milestones – making it a true emblem of the nation’s heritage.

5. Timeline of Events

Year & Event

1163 Construction began

1345 Cathedral completed

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowned Emperor here

1831 Victor Hugo published “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”

1909 Joan of Arc canonized at the cathedral

April 15, 2019 Major fire destroyed spire and roof

2024 (expected) Restoration to be completed and cathedral reopens

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Started: 1173 (12th century)

Location: Pisa, Italy

Outstanding features: Freestanding marble bell tower, iconic tilt due to unstable soil

Historical meaning: Part of Pisa’s cathedral complex (Piazza dei Miracoli), symbol of medieval engineering challenges and later preservation success, world-famous landmark

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Started: 1245 (rebuilt by King Henry III, original abbey ~960)

Location: London, England

Outstanding features: Gothic architecture, Coronation Chair, Poets’ Corner

Historical meaning: Coronation site since 1066, royal ceremonies, and burial place of monarchs & famous figures

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1. Year of Construction

Began: 1248

Essentially completed: 1880 (after centuries of intermittent work)

2. Location (City + Country)

Cologne, Germany (DE)

3. Description (Key Features & Historical Significance)

Cologne Cathedral is a towering example of Gothic architecture, renowned for its:
– Twin spires (once the tallest structures in the world at 157 meters)
– Intricate façade with over 1,500 sculptures
– Stained-glass windows, including the medieval Three Kings Window
– Shrine of the Three Kings: A gilded reliquary said to hold the remains of the Magi
– Flying buttresses and pointed arches, showcasing Gothic engineering

4. Timeline of Events

(Chronological Order)

1248 :Construction began under Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden

1473: Work halted due to funding shortages; left unfinished for centuries

1842: Construction resumed under Prussian patronage

1880: Cathedral completed as originally planned (632 years after starting)

1944: Survived WWII bombings with severe damage but structure intact

1996: Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site

2005: Hosted World Youth Day with Pope Benedict XVI

Ongoing: Continuous restoration due to environmental erosion

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Cologne Cathedral ( German: Kölner Dom, officially Hohe Domkirche Sankt Petrus , English: Cathedral Church of Saint Peter) is a Catholic cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is a renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day. At 157 m (515 ft), the cathedral is currently the tallest twin-spired church in the world, the second tallest church in Europe after Ulm Minster, and the third tallest church in the world. It is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires. The towers for its two huge spires give the cathedral the largest façade of any church in the world. The choir has the largest height to width ratio, 3.6:1, of any medieval church.

Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 but was halted in the years around 1560, unfinished. Work did not restart until the 1840s, and the edifice was completed to its original Medieval plan in 1880.

Cologne's medieval builders had planned a grand structure to house the reliquary of the Three Kings and fit its role as a place of worship for the Holy Roman Emperor. Despite having been left incomplete during the medieval period, Cologne Cathedral eventually became unified as "a masterpiece of exceptional intrinsic value" and "a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence of Christian belief in medieval and modern Europe". Only the telecommunications tower is higher than the Cathedral.

When construction began on the present Cologne Cathedral in 1248 with foundation stone, the site had already been occupied by several previous structures. The earliest may have been for grain storage and possibly was succeeded by a Roman temple built by Mercurius Augustus. From the 4th century on, however, the site was occupied by Christian buildings, including a square edifice known as the "oldest cathedral" that was commissioned by Maternus, the first bishop of Cologne. A free-standing baptistery dating back to the 7th century was located at the east end of the present cathedral but was demolished in the 9th century to build the second cathedral. During excavations of the present cathedral, graves were discovered in the location of the oldest portion of the building; including that of a boy that was richly adorned with grave goods and another of a woman, popularly thought to be Wisigard. Both graves are thought to be from the 6th century. Only ruins of the baptistery and the octagonal baptismal font remain today.

The second church, called the "Old Cathedral", was completed in 818. It was destroyed by fire on 30 April 1248, during demolition work to prepare for a new cathedral.

In 1164, the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainald of Dassel, acquired the relics of the Three Kings which the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, had taken from the Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio, Milan, Italy. (Parts of the relics have since been returned to Milan.) The relics have great religious significance and drew pilgrims from all over Christendom. It was important to church officials that they be properly housed, and thus began a building program in the new style of Gothic architecture, based in particular on the French cathedral of Amiens.

The foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1248, by Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden. The eastern arm was completed under the direction of Master Gerhard, was consecrated in 1322 and sealed off by a temporary wall so it could be used as the work continued. Eighty-four misericords in the choir date from this building phase.

In the mid-14th century work on the west front commenced under Master Michael. This work ceased in 1473, leaving the south tower complete to the belfry level and crowned with a huge crane that remained in place as a landmark of the Cologne skyline for 400 years. Some work proceeded intermittently on the structure of the nave between the west front and the eastern arm, but during the 16th century this also stopped.

With the 19th-century Romantic enthusiasm for the Middle Ages, and spurred by the discovery of the original plan for the façade, it was decided, with the commitment of the Protestant Prussian Court, to complete the cathedral. It was achieved by civic effort; the Central-Dombauverein, founded in 1842, raised two-thirds of the enormous costs, while the Prussian state supplied the remaining third. The state saw this as a way to improve its relations with the large number of Catholic subjects it had gained in 1815, but especially after 1871, it was regarded as a project to symbolize German nationhood.

Work resumed in 1842 to the original design of the surviving medieval plans and drawings, but utilizing more modern construction techniques, including iron roof girders. The nave was completed and the towers were added. The bells were installed in the 1870s. The largest bell is St. Petersglocke.

The completion of Germany's largest cathedral was celebrated as a national event on 14 August 1880, 632 years after construction had begun. The celebration was attended by Emperor Wilhelm I. With a height of 157.38 metres (516.3 ft), it was the tallest building in the world for four years until the completion of the Washington Monument.

The cathedral suffered fourteen hits by aerial bombs during World War II. Badly damaged, it nevertheless remained standing in an otherwise completely flattened city. The twin spires were an easily recognizable navigational landmark for Allied aircraft bombing.

On 6 March 1945, an area west of the cathedral (Marzellenstrasse/Trankgasse) was the site of intense combat between American tanks of the 3rd Armored Division and a Panther Ausf. A of Panzer brigade 106 Feldherrnhalle. The Panther successfully knocked out a Sherman, killing three men, before it was destroyed by a T26E3 Pershing hours later. Footage of that battle survives. The destroyed Panther was later put on display at the base of the cathedral for the remainder of the war in Europe.

Repairs of the war damage were completed in 1956. An emergency repair to the base of the northwest tower, carried out in 1944 using poor-quality brick taken from a nearby ruined building, remained visible as a reminder of the war until 2005, when it was decided to restore the section to its original appearance.

Repair and maintenance work is constantly being carried out in one or another section of the building, which is rarely completely free of scaffolding, as wind, rain, and pollution slowly eat away at the stones. The Dombauhütte, established to build the cathedral and keep it in repair, is said to employ the best stonemasons in the Rhineland. Half the costs of repair and maintenance are still borne by the Dombauverein.

On 18 August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI visited the cathedral during his apostolic visit to Germany, as part of World Youth Day 2005 festivities. An estimated one million pilgrims visited the cathedral during this time. Also as part of the events of World Youth Day, Cologne Cathedral hosted a televised gala performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Choir conducted by Sir Gilbert Levine.

On 25 August 2007, the cathedral received a new stained glass window in the south transept. The 113 square metres (1,220 sq ft) glass work was created by the German artist Gerhard Richter with the €400,000 cost paid by donations. It is composed of 11,500 identically sized pieces of colored glass resembling pixels, randomly arranged by computer, which create a colorful "carpet". Since the loss of the original window in World War II, the space had been temporarily filled with plain glass. The then archbishop of the cathedral, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who had preferred a figurative depiction of 20th-century Catholic martyrs for the window, did not attend the unveiling. Holder of the office since 2014 is Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki. On 5 January 2015, the cathedral remained dark as floodlights were switched off to protest a demonstration by PEGIDA.

In 1996, the cathedral was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List of culturally important sites. In 2004, it was placed on the "World Heritage in Danger" list, as the only Western site in danger, due to plans to construct several high-rise buildings nearby, which would have visually impacted the site. The cathedral was removed from the list in 2006, following the authorities' decision to limit the heights of buildings constructed near and around the cathedral.

As a World Heritage Site and host to the Shrine of the Three Kings, Cologne Cathedral is a major attraction for tourists and pilgrims, and is one of the oldest and most important pilgrimage sites of Northern Europe. Visitors can climb 533 stone steps of the spiral staircase to a viewing platform about 100 m (330 ft) above the ground. The platform gives a scenic view over the Rhine.

There is ongoing conservation at the cathedral to address the problem of the black discoloration caused by the sandstone reacting with sulfuric acid during rainfall. The acidic rain is a consequence of air pollution.

St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. was modeled after the cathedral.

See also: Finials of Cologne Cathedral

The design of Cologne Cathedral was based quite closely on that of Amiens Cathedral in terms of ground plan, style and the width to height proportion of the central nave. The plan is in the shape of a Latin Cross, as is usual with Gothic cathedrals. It has two aisles on either side, which help to support one of the very highest Gothic vaults in the world, being nearly as tall as that of the Beauvais Cathedral, much of which collapsed. Externally the outward thrust of the vault is taken by flying buttresses in the French manner. The eastern end has a single ambulatory, the second aisle resolving into a of seven radiating chapels.

Internally, the medieval choir is more varied and less mechanical in its details than the 19th-century building. It presents a French style arrangement of very tall arcade, a delicate narrow triforium gallery lit by windows and with detailed tracery merging with that of the windows above. The clerestory windows are tall and retain some old figurative glass in the lower sections. The whole is united by the tall shafts that sweep unbroken from the floor to their capitals at the spring of the vault. The vault is of plain quadripartite arrangement.

The choir retains a great many of its original fittings, including the carved stalls, which is made the more surprising by the fact that French Revolutionary troops had desecrated the building. A large stone statue of St Christopher looks down towards the place where the earlier entrance to the cathedral was, before its completion in the late 19th century.

The nave has many 19th century stained glass windows. A set of five on the south side, called the Bayernfenster, were a gift from Ludwig I of Bavaria, and strongly represent the painterly German style of that date.

Externally, particularly from a distance, the building is dominated by its huge spires, which are entirely Germanic in character, being openwork like those of Ulm, Vienna, Strasbourg and Regensburg Cathedrals.

One of the treasures of the cathedral is the High Altar, which was installed in 1322. It is constructed of black marble, with a solid slab 15 feet (4.6 m) long forming the top. The front and sides are overlaid with white marble niches into which are set figures, with the Coronation of the Virgin at the centre.

The most celebrated work of art in the cathedral is the Shrine of the Three Kings, commissioned by Philip von Heinsberg, archbishop of Cologne from 1167 to 1191 and created by Nicholas of Verdun, begun in 1190. It is traditionally believed to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men, whose relics were acquired by Frederick Barbarossa at the conquest of Milan in 1164. The shrine takes the form a large reliquary in the shape of a basilican church, made of bronze and silver, gilded and ornamented with architectonic details, figurative sculpture, enamels and gemstones. The shrine was opened in 1864 and was found to contain bones and garments.

Near the sacristy is the Gero Crucifix, a large crucifix carved in oak and with traces of paint and gilding. Believed to have been commissioned around 960 for Archbishop Gero, it is the oldest large crucifix north of the Alps and the earliest-known large free-standing Northern sculpture of the medieval period.

In the Sacrament Chapel is the Mailänder Madonna ("Milan Madonna"), dating from around 1290, a wooden sculpture depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. The altar of the patron saints of Cologne with an altarpiece by the International Gothic painter Stefan Lochner is in the Marienkapelle ("St. Mary's Chapel"). After completion in 1265, the radiating chapels were immediately taken into service as burial place. The relics of Saint Irmgardis found a final resting place in the St. Agnes' Chapel. Her trachyte sarcophagus is considered to be created by the cathedral masons' guild around 1280. Other works of art are in the Cathedral Treasury.

Embedded in the interior wall are a pair of stone tablets on which are carved the provisions formulated by Archbishop Englebert II (1262-67) under which Jews were permitted to reside in Cologne.

Cologne Cathedral has two pipe organs by Klais Orgelbau: the Transept Organ, built in 1948, and the Nave Organ, built in 1998. Cathedral organists have included Josef Zimmermann, Clemens Ganz (1985-2001) and Winfried Bönig (2001).

The cathedral has eleven church bells, four of which are medieval. The first was the 3.8-tonne Dreikönigsglocke ("Bell of the Three Kings"), cast in 1418, installed in 1437, and recast in 1880. Two of the other bells, the Pretiosa (10.5 tonnes; at that time the largest bell in the Western world) and the Speciosa (5.6 tonnes) were installed in 1448 and remain in place today.

During the 19th century, as the building neared completion, there was a desire to increase the number of bells. This was facilitated by Kaiser Wilhelm I who gave French bronze cannon, captured in 1870-71, for this purpose. The 22 pieces of artillery were displayed outside the cathedral on 11 May 1872. Andreas Hamm in Frankenthal used them to cast a bell of over 27,000 kilos on 19 August 1873. The tone was not harmonious and another attempt was made on 13 November 1873. The Central Cathedral Association, which had agreed to take over the costs, did not want this bell either. Another attempt took place on 3 October 1874. The colossal bell was shipped to Cologne and on 13 May 1875, installed in the cathedral. This Kaiserglocke was eventually melted in 1918 to support the German war effort. The Kaiserglocke was the largest free-swinging bell in history.

The 24-tonne St. Petersglocke ("Bell of St. Peter", "" in the Kölsch language or in common parlance known as " Dicker Pitter"), was cast in 1922 and was the largest free-swinging bell in the world, until a new bell was cast in Innsbruck for the People's Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest in Romania.

1. ^ erzbistum-koeln.de: Monsignore Guido Assmann wird neuer Dompropst, 29. Mai 2020.

2. ^ A Little Closer to Heaven Archived 14 September 2010 at the Wayback Machine, the official movie, Cologne Cathedral website. Retrieved 7 November 2010.

3. Leonard Ennen, ^ Der Dom in Köln von seinem Beginne bis zu seiner Vollendung: Festschrift gewidmet den Freunden und Gönnern aus Anlass der Vollendung vom Verstande des Central-Dombauvereins, 1880, p. 79

4. ^ Wim Swaan gives the latest date as 1560, but a date of 1520 is considered more probable by other scholars.

5. ^ Gilley, Sheridan; Stanley, Brian (2006). The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 8, World Christianities C.1815-c.1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-521-81456-0.

6. ^ https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050818_cologne-cathedral.html Papal Visit to Cologne

7. ^ "Gerhard Richter digitalisiert Kölner Dom" [Gerhard Richter digitizes Cologne Cathedral]. Der Spiegel (in German). Deutsche Presse-Agentur. 25 August 2007.

8. ^ "Germany Pegida protests: Rallies over 'Islamisation'". BBC News. 6 January 2015. In Cologne, the authorities switched off the lights of the city's cathedral as a way of warning Pegida supporters they were supporting "extremists". "We don't think of it as a protest, but we would like to make the many conservative Christians [who support Pegida] think about what they are doing," the dean of the cathedral, Norbert Feldhoff, told the BBC.

9. ^ https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/8-fascinating-things-didnt-know-colognes-cathedral/ 8 fascinating facts about Cologne's Cathedral

10. ^ Sankowski, Kelly (14 February 2019). "For 150 years, St. Joseph's Catholic Church has served as a place of refuge and unity on Capitol Hill". Catholic Standard.

11. Reiner Dieckhoff: Die mittelalterliche Ausstattung des Kölner Domes, in ^ Arnold Wolff (ed.): Der gotische Dom in Köln; Vista Point Verlag, Köln 2008, S. 47

12. ^ Baron, Salo Wittmayer. A social and religious history of the Jews, 2nd Edition, Columbia University Press, 1965, p. 174

13. The ^ World Peace Bell in Newport, Kentucky is larger, but turns around its center of mass rather than its top.

Swaan, Wim and Christopher Brooke, The Gothic Cathedral, Omega Books (1969), ISBN 0-907853-48-X

Fletcher, Banister, A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method.

Hubbard, Howard, Masterpieces of Western Sculpture, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-23278-4

Wolff, Arnold, Cologne Cathedral. Its History - Its Works of Arts, Verlag (editor) Kölner Dom, Cologne: 2nd edition 2003, ISBN 978-3-7743-0342-3

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Cologne Cathedral ( German: Kölner Dom, officially Hohe Domkirche Sankt Petrus , English: Cathedral Church of Saint Peter ) is a Catholic cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne.