Germany: Cologne Cathedral

One of the most iconic landmarks of Cologne is the Cathedral. It's huge gothic spires rise high into the sky and since it is lit at night it dominates the old town area as a watchful landmark. What you may not know is that although this cathedral appears anciently gothic (you know 1200s stuff), it was not completed until the 1880s and there is still a huge amount of renovating that goes on. 

In fact there is a legend that when construction on the cathedral stops the world will end. As you can imagine the city council continues to allocate funds for the cathedral in the yearly budget. 

Our first night in Germany we went to watch the sun set over the cathedral. While the sky did not turn as beautiful colors as it did over the forum in Rome, it was still beautiful and we loved seeing the lights come on. And we had a fun photo shoot.  

We walked back past it on our way to our hotel and were excited for the next day when we would get to take a tour of it and see the Cathedral's treasury. 

Our tour was great. Possibly the best that we had in Europe, the other one in the contest is the one of the Tower of London by the Beefeater. Our guide was very knowledgeable and funny so we learned a lot. 

But before we get into the fun things about the Cathedral we need to cover some ground on medieval German politics so you understand why Cologne and specifically the Cathedral was some important. Way back when Germany and some other places were parts of the Holy Roman Empire, which as my German professors summarized, was neither Holy nor Roman and wasn't that much of an Empire. But there you have it. This empire was comprised of many kingdoms and city states and ruled over by a single emperor. For the time that we are talking about the emperor's office was elected rather than hereditary. He was elected by seven special Kurfursten (electoral princes) three of which were spiritual (archbishops) and four of which were secular (plain old kings or princes). In addition to electing the next ruler of the empire these princes sat in regular council on policies of the empire. As you can imagine, they were hugely important people (side note Martin Luther's patron when he wrote the 95 theses was one of these electoral princes which is why he was powerful enough to protect Luther from the Pope. Otherwise Luther would likely have been executed rather than just being excommunicated) and it was vastly important to them that their neighbors and especially the other electoral princes appreciate how important they were. So everyone started building giant buildings: kings built palaces, archbishops built churches. 

Which brings us to our story. The Archbishop of Cologne wanted all his rivals to know how cool he was so he got himself one of the most powerful relics in Europe (the intact bodies of all 3 wise men. yep.) and commissioned himself a church. The only problem was that construction started only about 100 years before the reformation started. Cologne is in North Germany, the part that became protestant hence the slowed construction.

Ok on to the tour. Cologne is a pretty standard Gothic church big empty, lots of pokey spires, stained glass windows. See the organ loft on the top left? remember that, it will be important later. It did have several important artifacts in it though. Starting with the statue of St. Christopher. You'll remember that St Christopher was a giant who offered to carry a baby across a river. The baby turned out to be the baby Jesus who was super heavy because he was carrying the sins of the whole world. St Christopher made it across the river. The end. He is supposed to bring good fortune to travelers so all the pilgrims coming to see the relics in the cathedral wanted to see him first and last on their trip to the cathedral. Because the cathedral wasn't completed on time he isn't by the big impressive front door, he is by the side door of the transept. He is the oldest statue in the cathedral.

Next up, the organ. Another consequence of building the cathedral for 700 years was funky acoustics. there are 4 different organs in the church The big fancy one you saw in the other picture has the best acoustics for the building and they had to do some very fancy engineering to get it hung. The problem is it is up lots of tiny little flights of stairs which take the organist 20 minutes to climb. As you can imagine, they only play that organ on special occasions. One of which is Carnival which is the only time during the year that the organist gets to flip a little lever releasing confetti and a little cuckoo clock jester who waves while everyone sings a marti gras song. 

 

Next up the floor. It is made up of really beautiful tile mosaics. The tiles are very tiny and the designs are very intricate. The one on the right is the guy credited with designing the cathedral. He didn't design the cathedral that was actually his predecessor, but no one liked him so this dude gets the credit.

Next up the relic containing the bodies of all three magi. You probably weren't expecting them to all be buried together. In Spain. That's not really east is it? But there you have it. The reliquary is actually huge: 6 feet long and about 3 feet wide. It is made of gold and has tons of saints, prophets, and apostles all molded onto it. And on special holidays, like 3 king's day, they open little windows in it so you can see the skulls. It wasn't a special holiday so there were no skulls to be seen. 

The reliquary is in the choir area. The choir seats are the oldest surviving ones in all of Europe. They are intricately carved with little animals and plants. All the seats have little devils carved into them too, except for the one for the Pope, everyone else just has to deal with the devils. There are frescas on the walls of the choir that were painted in the 1500s. I can't really tell what stories they are but they're pretty old.


Next up: the windows. Because it took so long to build the cathedral, they are the only church in Europe with a stained glass window from every century 13th-21st. During WWII, they preserved the windows in big crates of sand to protect them from the bombs. It was interesting to walk around and look at all the different kinds of windows and how the style varied across the centuries.

Next the actual important art. Because the cathedral is dedicated to the 3 wisemen all the art seems very Christmassy. They have two very old triptics showing the adoration of the Magi. Please note that they use two different forms of symbolism for the Magi. In the older one (1440s left) the three Magi represent the three stages of life so we have a young man, a middle aged man, and an old man all bringing presents. In the more recent one (late 1400s below) they represent the 3 known continents Europe, Asia, Africa. So you get the familiar set of wisemen one white, one asian, and one black. There were also more statues of wise men and wisemen in the windows. Very festive for the Christmas season.

Finally the treasury. There were lots of shiny things there and really well displayed. We particularly liked the vestments made from silver cloth sewn with gold thread and embellished with precious stones. They wore these things up until the 1970s. When I say these things I mean that each new archbishop got his own new set. There were also jeweled swords and rings and goblets and more relics. My favorite may have been the books though. Most of them predated the printing press (1455). They are pretty incredible and really well preserved.