Cologne Cathedral

• 1. Introduction

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  For about 400 years, a huge crane sat on top of the unfinished south tower of Cologne Cathedral. It stayed so long that it became part of the city skyline. The church beneath it is now the tallest twin-spired church in the world, at 157 m. It is Germany's most visited landmark, drawing an average of 6 million people a year. Yet its builders began in 1248, and the work stalled around 1560. What followed was a rediscovered medieval plan, a Protestant Prussian court that took up the cause, a city flattened by war, and stone that never stops wearing away. This documentary asks what the medieval builders wanted the church to hold. It asks how the project came back to life after centuries of silence. And it asks why the cathedral is almost never free of scaffolding.

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• 2. Cathedrals Beneath

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  Maternus of Cologne became the city's first bishop in around 313, yet his congregation had no church. The small Christian community met in a residential building, thought to have stood on the cathedral hill below today's choir. By late antiquity a baptistery stood east of the choir. Early Christians stepped into knee-deep water and were completely doused. The piscina from that baptistery can still be reached in the base of the cathedral. It is considered the oldest evidence of Christian worship in Cologne.

  In the 6th century, after Roman rule on the Rhine collapsed, Merovingian petty kings in Cologne built an episcopal church on the same hill. It eventually reached 40 to 50 m in length and had an ambon. It was probably built by King Theudebert I and served as a burial place for the royal family. His wife Wisigard was buried there around 537. The excavation finds under the choir do not allow a complete reconstruction of these early buildings.

  A Carolingian cathedral followed, consecrated in 870. It is now named for Bishop Hildebold, a close advisor to Charlemagne who died in 818. Nobody knows how much Hildebold contributed, but he probably started the work, and Charlemagne supported it generously. At around 95 m long, it was one of the largest Carolingian churches ever built. It became an architectural model for many churches in the early Holy Roman Empire.

  The church was a basilica with two choirs. The east choir was dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus. The more important west choir honoured the memory of Saint Peter. Both its patronage and its design pointed to Old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and people regarded it as the St. Peter's Basilica of the North. The message was that Cologne was a holy city and a faithful daughter of the Roman Church. Among its most important relics were the reliquary-staff of Saint Peter and the chains of Saint Peter. The Hillinus Codex of the 11th century shows the building in an unusually realistic picture for its time.

  In 1164, relics arrived from Milan that would change what this building was for.

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• 3. Bones Of The Magi

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  On the 23rd of July 1164, Rainald of Dassel brought the bones of the Three Wise Men from Milan to Cologne. He was Archbishop of Cologne and Imperial Archchancellor. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had left the relics to him from his spoils of war. Contemporaries perceived the arrival as a "propaganda success". Scholars still dispute whether Rainald himself or the Milanese patricians should be regarded as the "inventors" of the relics. Either way, the bones were considered worthy of veneration at least since their transfer.

  Between 1190 and 1225, goldsmiths made the Shrine of the Three Kings for these saints. It is considered one of the most sophisticated goldsmith's works of the Middle Ages. It was placed in the centre of the Old Cathedral, and Cologne became an internationally renowned place of pilgrimage. An office called custos regum, meaning guardian of the kings, was established to oversee the pilgrim crowds. The building itself coped badly. Its only narrow side portal had to serve as entrance and exit at the same time.

  The Gothic cathedral begun in 1248 was meant to replace the Old Cathedral step by step. Careless demolition work and a fire destroyed the east choir and almost the entire old church. The Shrine of the Three Kings was saved from the fire. The western parts of the old building were rebuilt provisionally. They came down only after 1322, once the Gothic choir was finished and the Gothic nave could begin.

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• 4. Building And Stopping

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  On Saturday, the 15th of August 1248, Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone of the Gothic cathedral. Master Gerhard directed the eastern arm, which was consecrated in 1322. A temporary wall sealed it off so that it could be used while work continued. The choir holds eighty-four misericords from this phase. The ground plan followed Amiens Cathedral closely, as do the style and the width-to-height proportion of the nave. The plan is a Latin Cross, with two aisles on either side. They help support one of the highest Gothic vaults in the world, nearly as tall as the vault of Beauvais Cathedral.

  In 1473 the work ceased. The south tower stood complete up to the belfry level. Some building on the nave between the west front and the eastern arm continued intermittently, but during the 16th century it stopped as well. Attempts to complete the church began around 1814, but proper funding did not arrive until the 1840s.

  The 19th-century Romantic enthusiasm for the Middle Ages helped, and so did the discovery of the original plan for the façade. The Protestant Prussian court, working with the church, committed to finishing the cathedral. The Central-Dombauverein, founded in 1842, raised two-thirds of the enormous costs, and the Prussian state supplied the rest. The state hoped to improve relations with the many Catholic subjects it had gained in 1815. After 1871 it also saw the project as a symbol of German nationhood.

  Construction resumed in 1842, following the surviving medieval plans and drawings. The builders used more modern techniques, including iron roof girders. Ernst Friedrich Zwirner led the work until his death in 1861. He designed several parts, including a chapel dedicated to St Mary and the crossing tower. The nave was completed and all three towers were added. The two huge spires give the cathedral the largest façade of any church in the world. Like the spires of Ulm, Vienna, Strasbourg and Regensburg, they are openwork and entirely Germanic in character.

  On the 15th of October 1880, Emperor Wilhelm I attended a celebration of the completion, treated as a national event. It came 632 years after the foundation stone. At 157.38 m, the cathedral was the tallest building in the world for four years, until the Washington Monument was completed. The two towers differ in height by only a few centimetres.

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• 5. Bombs And Rubble

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  Fourteen aerial bombs hit Cologne Cathedral during World War II. Its twin spires made it an easily recognizable navigational landmark for Allied aircraft bombing the city. Badly damaged, it nevertheless remained standing in an otherwise completely flattened city.

  On the 6th of March 1945, intense combat broke out west of the cathedral, around Marzellenstrasse and Trankgasse. American tanks of the 3rd Armored Division faced a Panther Ausf. A of Panzer brigade 106 Feldherrnhalle. The Panther, a German medium tank, sat by a pile of rubble near a train station, right beside the twin spires. It knocked out two Sherman tanks and killed three men. A T26E3 Pershing nicknamed Eagle 7 destroyed it soon afterwards. Film footage of that battle survives.

  In 1944, Willy Weyres was appointed as the cathedral's architect. He oversaw the repairs, which were far enough along for the cathedral to reopen in 1956. The crossing tower, completed in 1860 to Zwirner's design, was severely damaged by the bombing but remained structurally sound. In 1965, Weyres redesigned its cladding in an Art Deco style, with decorative angels by Erlefried Hoppe. He also demolished the war-damaged St Mary's Chapel that Zwirner had designed. Both decisions were controversial, and some critics called the new crossing tower a "wart" on the cathedral.

  Archaeologists were also at work. Excavations began in 1946 under Otto Doppelfeld to find out whether the bombs had damaged the foundations. They concluded in 1997 and are counted among the most meaningful excavations of churches. They revealed previously unknown details of the earlier buildings on the site.

  One scar was left visible on purpose, or at least by default. A repair to part of the northwest tower, made in 1944, used poor-quality brick taken from a nearby ruined building. It remained visible as a reminder of the war until 2005, when it was restored to its original appearance.

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• 6. Stone Against Weather

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  Master builder Barbara Schock-Werner once said: "Cologne Cathedral without scaffolding is not a pipe dream, but a nightmare." She went on: "It would mean that we would no longer be able to afford the cathedral." The Dombauhütte, the cathedral works established to build and maintain the church, employs skilled stonemasons for the task. The Dombauverein still bears half of the repair and maintenance costs.

  The finished cathedral was visible without scaffolding for only a few years. After the official completion in 1880, finishing work went on for around 20 years. Shortly before his death in 1902, master builder Richard Voigtel publicly stated that the cathedral was at last complete. Then, in 1906, the wings of an angel figure fell from the façade, and the renovation work resumed.

  The building is made of different types of rock, which weather at different rates. Water, the sulphur content of the air and bird droppings attack the filigree buttresses and arches from all sides. From the 1960s onwards, acid rain severely affected the stones and turned them increasingly black. Only in the 1990s did air pollution control measures reduce the level of pollution.

  Schlaitdorf sandstone, used from 1842 for the transept façades and the upper parts of the nave and transept, weathers most intensively. Until the 1980s it was preferably replaced with Londorf basalt lava, which is very weather-resistant but grey rather than sandy beige. Since the 1990s the master builders have tried to restore with stone as close as possible to the original sandstone. The Dombauhütte has tested numerous means of preserving the stones, and no convincing method has been found. The iron anchors and dowels that hold the architectural decoration are also beginning to rust. They threaten to crack the stones and need replacing with steel parts. The conclusion is blunt: "It is therefore foreseeable that no one alive today will ever see the cathedral without scaffolding."

  The 1992 Roermond earthquake showed another danger. A 400 kg finial on the eastern pinnacle of the southern transept gable broke off and smashed through the roof. It damaged the roof truss, and four other finials were loosened.

  Pressure came from outside the walls too. The cathedral joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996. In 2004 it was placed on the "World Heritage in Danger" list, the only Western site there, because of plans for several high-rise buildings nearby. The buildings would have affected the view of the site. It was removed from the danger list in 2006, after the authorities limited the height of buildings near the cathedral.

  From May to November 2021, a remote-controlled drone took 200,000 high-resolution photos of the façade from a distance of 5 to 7 m. They were assembled into a digital 3D model with 25 billion polygons and a size of 50 gigabytes. The model cost in the six-figure range. It documents the building's condition and its conservation needs, even in remote areas.

  Visitors can climb 533 stone steps of the spiral staircase to a viewing platform about 100 m above the ground, with a view over the Rhine. In March 2026, the cathedral's management announced that it would begin charging tourists admission in the second half of the year to help pay for maintenance.

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• 7. Voices Of Bronze

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  Eleven church bells hang in Cologne Cathedral, and four of them are medieval. The three largest are bourdon bells. The Dreikönigsglocke, the Bell of the Three Kings, weighs 3.8 t. It was cast in 1418, installed in 1437 and recast in 1880. The Pretiosa, at 10.5 t, was installed in 1448 and was then the largest bell in the Western world. The Speciosa weighs 5.6 t. Both the Pretiosa and the Speciosa remain in place today.

  As the building neared completion in the 19th century, the cathedral wanted more bells. Kaiser Wilhelm I helped by giving French bronze cannon captured in 1870-71. The 22 pieces of artillery were displayed outside the cathedral on the 11th of May 1872. Andreas Hamm of Frankenthal used them to cast a bell of over 27 t on the 19th of August 1873.

  The tone was not harmonious, so a second attempt followed on the 13th of November 1873. The Central Cathedral Association, which had agreed to cover the costs, did not want that bell either. A third attempt took place on the 3rd of October 1874. The colossal bell was shipped to Cologne and installed in the cathedral on the 13th of May 1875. Called the Kaiserglocke, it was the largest free-swinging bell in history. It was melted down in 1918 to support the German war effort.

  The 24 t St. Petersglocke was cast in the early 1920s and became the largest free-swinging bell in the world. It held that record until a new bell was cast in 2016 in Innsbruck for the People's Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest, Romania. In Cologne it is rung only on eight major holidays, such as Easter and Christmas.

  On Thursday, the 3rd of March 2022, landmark cathedrals across Europe chimed in unison in solidarity with Ukraine, as bystanders gathered to mourn those killed during Russia's invasion and pray for peace. The Kölner Dom was among them.

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• 8. Art And Reckoning

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  The high altar, installed in 1322, is made of black marble with a solid slab 15 ft long forming the top. White marble niches overlay the front and sides, holding figures, with the Coronation of the Virgin at the centre. The most celebrated work of art is the Shrine of the Three Kings, commissioned by Philip von Heinsberg, who was archbishop from 1167 to 1191. Nicholas of Verdun created it. It is a reliquary in the shape of a basilican church, made of bronze and silver, gilded, and decorated with enamels and gemstones. When the shrine was opened in 1864, it was found to contain bones and garments.

  Near the sacristy stands the Gero Crucifix, carved in oak and believed to have been commissioned around 960 for Archbishop Gero. It is the oldest large crucifix north of the Alps. In the Sacrament Chapel, the Mailänder Madonna was made in the cathedral workshop around 1290 to replace an original lost in a fire. The altar of the patron saints of Cologne, with an altarpiece by the International Gothic painter Stefan Lochner, is in St. Mary's Chapel. The nave has five 19th-century windows called the Bayernfenster, a gift from Ludwig I of Bavaria. The cathedral also has two pipe organs by Klais Orgelbau, one built in 1948 and one in 1998.

  On the 18th of August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI visited during World Youth Day, and an estimated one million pilgrims came to the cathedral during those events. A televised gala performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was held there, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Choir under Gilbert Levine.

  On the 25th of August 2007, a new stained glass window was unveiled in the south transept. The artist Gerhard Richter made the 113 m2 window, and donations paid its cost of €400,000. It is composed of 11,500 identically sized pieces of coloured glass resembling pixels. A computer arranged them randomly, creating a colourful carpet. Since the original window was lost in World War II, plain glass had filled the space. Cardinal Joachim Meisner had preferred a figurative depiction of 20th-century Catholic martyrs, and he did not attend the unveiling. On the 5th of January 2015, the cathedral stayed dark as its floodlights were switched off to protest a PEGIDA demonstration.

  Embedded in an interior wall are two stone tablets carved with provisions formulated by Archbishop Englebert II, who served from 1262 to 1267. They set out the terms under which Jews were permitted to reside in Cologne. In the 2000s the cathedral chapter began to examine antisemitic imagery in some of its artifacts. Outside artists had called for this reckoning. In 2002 the Melanchthon Akademie held a conference, and the performance artist Wolfram Kastner protested the Judensau imagery carved into the choir stalls. Kastner and fellow artist Günter Wangerin later demanded an educational sign for the carving and the removal of stone swastika carvings. A colloquium followed in 2006, and in 2017 the chapter created a working group with the Cologne Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. Its title translates as "The Cathedral and 'the Jews'."

  As of 2024, the working group chose to leave the antisemitic art in place, neither removing nor hiding it. Viewers can learn about it in its original setting, and the cathedral offers dedicated guided tours. But the group wanted every visitor to think about how the cathedral portrays Jewish-Christian relations. So in August 2023 it launched the Cologne Cathedral International Art Competition for a new permanent artwork. The competition rejected seven nominated artists because they had signed open letters criticizing Israel's actions in Gaza or calling for boycotts. That echoed a wider debate in Germany over how cultural institutions should treat artists' responses to the conflict.

  On the 3rd of April 2025, the chapter announced that Andrea Büttner had won, with a mural for the wall of the Chapel of St. Mary. It will show a life-size realistic painting of the stone base of the Torah ark from a former synagogue in Cologne, floating above the Altarpiece of the Patron Saints of Cologne. After a pogrom, the ark was damaged and removed, and the synagogue was replaced with a chapel. The ark's base was then used to support that very altarpiece. Büttner said she wanted to "take something that has been hidden from the cathedral's visitors up to now and have it openly displayed in a central location."

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