Today I visited Cologne Cathedral and I took some pictures and made sketches. Unfortunately my camera broke and all the pictures turned out to be blurry, I am a little upset about that but I guess I am just going to use images from the internet. It was fun to visit again and although I’ve been there 3 times now I still feel small when I enter the cathedral and its majestic architecture and height is phenomenal. I am going to write a report about it now. I think it’s a great method to visit different places to see the things for yourself and I feel like I pay so much more detail now already to everything that I see because I’ve learned quite a bit about architecture and its meanings et cetera.
è Visit a Gothic church
The Cologne Cathedral was started being built in 1248, it took until 1530 to finish the Gothic choir and because of money issues the building was not completed until 1880 when the two towers in the West were finished that made Cologne Cathedral one of the tallest churches in the world. It is also known for its length which is approximately 145 m and the height of the two towers is around 158 m.
During World War II it was hit by quite a few bombs but it survived and in 1998 the reconstruction and restoring of the Cathedral began. Even today there are still although only a few constructions on the Cathedral.
The Cathedral is also known for its excavations, tomb monuments of important archbishops et cetera. One can find the excavations underneath the Cathedral, one would find parts of the old cathedral, old stone columns to help them stabilise the building while working on its construction around 1500, the old fundament of the Cathedral before improving it with new architectural design and knowledge of how to built things in a more effective way, one would also find parts of the old floor from Medieval times, a part of a „street“ from the Roman Cologne, tomb monuments and sarcophagi, a well shaft from around 1400 and very interesting Roman construction from 2nd/3rd century that was meant to be some sort of heating system for the Roman house that had been there before they had started building any cathedral there. Other excavations are tombs of bishops, princes, princesses or other important historical figures (see Fig 4.1 for an example).
The moment one would step inside one would feel small walking down the majestic nave, with its detailed arches on each side, the sculptures of saints, apostels and angels built into the columns between the arches and the light that falls into the Cathedral and underlines the form and structure of the Cathedral’s architecture.
Cologne Cathedral is able to fit 4000 people, it has 1200 seats and 2800 people can stand. The great acoustic in the Cathedral can be attributed to the stone vaulting architecture that allows the music to be echoed across the room, which makes the music sound „so joyfully that their song, delightful by its consonance and unified harmony, was deemed a symphony angelic rather than human“ (Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St-Denis and its Art Treasures, ed., tr. and annotated by E. Panofsky, Princeton 1979 – from Honour&Fleming, A World History of Art, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2009).
The arcades are known for their detail. The columns are decorated with saints and musical angels (see Fig 3), on the spandrels painted angels overlook the cathedral and the detail of the tracery is extraordinary. The upper arcades show the magnificence of glass work. The arches are always crowned with a three-leaved flower and they always follow the same rhythm of architectural structure. There is always one big arch, four small arches inside which one can find 8 more and on top of they are crowned with the flower, on top of that are the stained glasses that tell a biblical story (see either above or Fig 5).
What one would also find inside is a various number of sculptures – of saints, apostles or Virgin Mary and Saint Peter (see Fig 3.1). Cologne Cathedral is also known for its Shrine of the Magi (1164) and it is placed in the East corner and on one end of the long nave (see Fig 2 for ground plan).
It shows images of the Last Judgement and can be found behind the high altar of Cologne Cathedral.
The surface of windows in the cathedral is approximately about 10.000 qm and the stained glass in the different windows tell different stories, e.g. Adoration of the Margi or the Coronation of the Virgin from 1330 (for an example of a window design see Fig 4.2).
This image shows another example of a window design and it also shows the richness in detail of each character shown in the story that the window is supposed to tell. The window in the middle shows the Lamentation over the dead Christ and the Last supper on the top.
This photo shows the West facade of Cologne Cathedral, it is perhaps the most famous side of the Cathedral because of its two towers. There are 3 portals (entrances) on the West, East and South facade of the building. Each side has a main portal and two outer portals which always display a saint. The West portal’s main entrance is the Virgin Mary portal and the one on the left is the Magi and the one on the right is the Saint Peter portal (see Fig 1 and Fig 1.1 for more detail). The main portal shows Mary with child surrounded by Cathedral’s most important saints showing the age before redemption. There is lots of detail to see in the door and doorknobs (see Fig 1.2).
If one would walk around the Cathedral one would find flying buttresses on each side of the building, stabilising the fundament and adding another piece of great architecture to the Cathedral.
When one would get to the South facade of the Cathedral one could see the difference between the West facade and the South facade’s design in architecture. It isn’t as high or majestic but it gives a great view on the flying buttresses on the side. Unfortunately no original plans from medieval times survived which meant that the architect had to make new plans orientating him on the plans of the West facade. The South facade was finished around 1855 but it took several years to decorate it with sculptures.
Lots of detail can be found on the outside of Cologne Cathedral. The ornamental design is very detailed and majestic. Looking up from the ground not a lot of detail can be seen, but looking at pictures that show close-ups from the upper part of the building one would find lots of detail and meaning in every detail (see Fig 2.1 and 2.2).
Cologne Cathedral is visited by 10 000 people each day and Cologne was the place for the “Kirchentag” in 2007 which is a big festival for church and religion, belief and celebrating one’s religion. It also is place for ceremonies e.g. mass, weddings, christenings and more. It is one of the most popular places where pilgrims go. After the definition of Abbot Suger’s Abbey of St Denis that set the standards for Gothic architecture as “architecturally majestic and rich in glass and carved decorations – new Jerusalem” (p. 378-9, Honour&Fleming, A World History of Art, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2009) Cologne Cathedral would be called “new Jerusalem” as it is rich in glass and carved decoration and the feeling of majestic architecture is obvious as for height and length of the Cathedral.
References:
Web pages:
Bibliography:
Honour&Fleming, A World History of Art, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2009
Werner Schäfke, Schnellkurs Gotik, DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, Köln, 2007
Remark: Unfortunately my camera broke and all pictures turned out blurry that’s why I have been using images from the internet.
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| my sketches |
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