Cologne Cathedral
— — the spires that took six centuries.
Not only on a wall.
“Two black Gothic spires that rise straight out of the train station, taller than any building around them for a long walk in every direction. The west front is dark with the patina of Rhine air and a century and a half of city soot, and the limestone reads charcoal against the river light. Inside, the nave runs taller than almost any other in the world. The Shrine of the Three Kings still sits behind the high altar. from the studio
Cologne Cathedral, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cologne Cathedral, the Hohe Domkirche Sankt Petrus, stands on the west bank of the Rhine in the old city of Cologne. The foundation stone was laid on August 15, 1248 under Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden, on the site of an earlier Carolingian church. Work continued in phases until it stalled around 1473 with the south tower half-built and a wooden crane left on top for nearly four centuries. Construction resumed in 1842 under Prussian patronage and the cathedral was completed in 1880, six hundred and thirty-two years after it was begun. UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage list in 1996.
The cathedral is built of trachyte from the Drachenfels quarry in the Siebengebirge upstream on the Rhine, the same volcanic stone used for the original medieval phase. The twin spires reach 157.4 metres, which made the cathedral the tallest building in the world from 1880 to 1884. The west façade covers about 7,100 square metres, the largest in any church anywhere. Fourteen aerial bombs hit the building during the Second World War, and the surrounding old town was almost entirely flattened, but the cathedral stood. The dark patina is a reaction of the trachyte to coal smoke and Rhine humidity over the last century.
The cathedral is open daily and entry to the nave is free. The Domplatte, the broad stone plaza, sits one short flight of steps from Köln Hauptbahnhof, the main railway station, which puts the spires in view the moment you walk out under the canopy. The Shrine of the Three Kings, a gilded reliquary from around 1190 by Nicholas of Verdun, sits in a glass case behind the high altar. The climb to the south tower is 533 steps to a viewing platform at about 97 metres, with no lift. The cathedral treasury and the late-medieval stained glass on the north aisle reward a slower visit.