dom domination

Although there are many other things to see and do in Cologne, the chance to see the city’s cathedral (German: ‘Kölner Dom’) is the principal draw and the main reason we went to Cologne earlier this year. One thing I specifically wanted to check out was the reason for the Dom’s exclusion from the shortlist compiled a few years ago as part of the process of defining a new ‘seven wonders of the world’.

In fact, there were no European Gothic cathedrals on the shortlist of twenty, and only one European site—the Colosseum in Rome—in the final selection of seven. As I wrote at the time (Wonderful), this is a flawed list, because that final selection was determined by popular vote, so nationalistic rather than æsthetic sentiments were the deciding factor. What else would privilege the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, which made the final cut, over the Statue of Liberty in New York, which merely made the shortlist. And while Machu Picchu seems an obvious choice, I wonder why Chichen Itzá was chosen over other Mesoamerican sites such as Palenque or Teotihuacán.

Paula had already been impressed by some of the churches that we visited in Brussels, especially that city’s cathedral, but when we emerged from the main railway station in Cologne to be confronted by the Dom on the other side of the road, she was absolutely gobsmacked. And with good reason. Cologne Cathedral is a veritable mountain of stone (the twin west towers are 157 metres high)—no reinforced concrete here. Here are two views of the west façade, the second of which was taken by Paula (notice the scaffolding on the left-hand tower—the cathedral employs a full-time maintenance staff of 100):

It was impossible to get far enough away to capture everything in a single shot, as this view from the south also demonstrates:

…although the view from the east is more compact. This is the oldest part of the cathedral, construction of which started in 1248 and continued for more than two centuries. Mainly due to a lack of both interest and money, building work ceased in the early sixteenth century, and the huge shell was left unfinished for more than 300 years. However, interest was revived in the nineteenth century, and construction was completed in 1880 in line with the original mediæval plan.

To demonstrate how the Dom dominates the city, I’ve selected the following five photos. The first is of the road that separates the railway station from the Dom. The scaffolding on the left-hand tower is clearly visible:

The next, taken by Paula, is the view from the opposite bank of the Rhine, with the Hohenzollern Bridge on the right of the picture. The exotic building to the left of the Dom is Groß St Martin, one of twelve Romanesque churches to be seen in the mediæval part of Cologne.

Ancient and modern (also taken by Paula):

The following photo was taken downstream from the Hohenzollern Bridge, while the one after that was taken from the bridge itself. I cannot positively identify the rider on the horse, but given that Hohenzollern was the dynastic name of the Prussian imperial family, it’s likely to be one of the kaisers.

We signed up for a guided tour of the cathedral, although you could spend a week here and still be seeing something new. However, we were treated to some very fine snippets of information that you would never know about unless told. For example, all the mediæval stained glass was removed upon the outbreak of war in 1939 and stored in deep basements all around Germany, but all the nineteenth-century glass was destroyed during the war. Here are two of those mediæval windows, first a view of the entire window, then an enlargement of a portion:

I will leave it to you, the reader, to determine what is being depicted here, although the second window has a martial rather than a religious theme.

All the following interior shots were taken by Paula. Apart from the stained glass, I couldn’t take a photo without activating flash, which I didn’t think was appropriate in such a place. I hadn’t been paying full attention to our guide, but my ears pricked up when she pointed out the gold reliquary behind the high altar. It contained the bones of the three wise men!

Call me a cynic, but how were they ever identified?

They appear only in Matthew’s gospel, and then for only the first twelve verses of Chapter 2, at the end of which:

12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

In other words, they disappeared from history, if they were ever part of history in the first place. They are far more likely to be a story made up by Matthew to fulfill some Old Testament prophecy or other. Apparently, though, the relics were a major focus of pilgrimage during the Middle Ages (they were installed here in 1164, in an earlier version of the cathedral). In other words, they were a money-making scheme.

There were some interesting mediæval mosaics on the floor surrounding the reliquary, which weighs 600 kilograms, although I don’t think it can be solid gold, despite the vast wealth of the mediæval Church. Unfortunately, the light made it difficult to take a good picture. This one is the best (the wavy lines represent streams and rivers):

The choir stalls are also mediæval originals:

The main entrance is extremely grand:

…but the side doors are scarcely less elaborate:

…while this cast iron bas-relief is one of several along the side walls:

The most important architectural innovation of the Gothic period was the flying buttress, good examples of which can be seen in the next photo:

When a flying buttress cast a shadow across a window during our cathedral tour, our guide referred to it as a ‘bridge’, but this feature is better described as a ‘half-arch’. The effect of flying buttresses can be seen in the next photo. Because a flying buttress takes part of the weight of the roof, it is possible to pierce the walls with much bigger windows than were possible in earlier Romanesque churches, which relied on the round arch.

The only one of the new seven wonders of the world that I’ve seen is the Great Wall of China, and I think the Dom is more impressive. It is certainly a better representative of the Christian contribution to world civilization than Christ the Redeemer. I haven’t tried to include everything that I saw in this collection of photos, because that would be an impossibility. Would I go back to Cologne? Certainly. Would I take another look at the cathedral? Yes, but only if I could be allowed to explore the gallery that you can see in the previous photo just below the windows.