Cologne Cathedral: A Gothic Church 632 Years in the Making

Cologne Cathedral, the Hohe Domkirche St. Petrus in the German city of Cologne, is one of the largest Gothic churches in the world. Its foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1248 to create a worthy home for the relics of the Three Kings, but work stopped in the late fifteenth century and the cathedral was finished only in 1880. The 632-year story, from medieval ambition to Romantic revival, made it a symbol of both Catholic devotion and German national identity.

Background: the relics of the Three Kings

Cologne was one of the leading cities of the Holy Roman Empire and the seat of a powerful archbishop, who was also one of the electors of the German king. In 1164 Archbishop Rainald of Dassel, chancellor of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, brought to Cologne relics believed to be those of the Magi, the wise men who visited the infant Jesus. They had been taken from Milan after Barbarossa captured the city in 1162, during the wars that later led to the Battle of Legnano.

The relics turned Cologne into one of the greatest pilgrimage centres in Europe. From around 1190 the goldsmith Nicholas of Verdun and his workshop began the Shrine of the Three Kings, a gilded reliquary shaped like a basilica and decorated with figures of prophets and apostles. Completed in the early thirteenth century, it is the largest reliquary of its kind in the Western world.

A new cathedral, 1248

The old cathedral, a Carolingian building consecrated in 873, seemed too modest for such relics. Gothic architecture had developed in France since the rebuilding of Saint-Denis in the 1140s, and Cologne’s clergy wanted a cathedral in the newest style.

On 15 August 1248 Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone. The first architect, known as Master Gerhard, had probably seen the latest French buildings. His plan was modelled closely on the cathedral of Amiens, with influence from the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, consecrated that same year. It called for a five-aisled church, a choir with a ring of radiating chapels and two enormous western towers.

The medieval building campaign and why it stopped

Work began at the east end, as was usual, so that the choir could be used while the rest was built. The choir, with its high glass walls and slender piers, was consecrated on 27 September 1322, and the Shrine of the Three Kings was placed there. Its stained glass and the statues of Christ, Mary and the apostles on the piers survive from this period.

Builders then turned to the nave and the west front. Around 1280–1300 an architect drew a huge plan of the west facade on parchment, more than four metres tall, now known as Plan F. The south tower rose slowly through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, reaching a height of roughly 59 metres.

Around 1473 work on the south tower stopped. A wooden crane was left standing on its top, and only minor work went on until the early sixteenth century. The nave was given a temporary roof and the unfinished cathedral became a familiar sight.

No single decision ended construction. Pilgrim donations declined in the late Middle Ages, and the city and archbishop were often in conflict. The sheer size of the project made each stage extremely expensive.

From the sixteenth century the Reformation divided the Empire and drained enthusiasm for great church projects, while Renaissance taste turned against the Gothic style. The crane on the south tower remained in place for around 400 years and became one of the best-known features of the Cologne skyline.

Rediscovery, revival and completion

By 1794, when French revolutionary troops occupied Cologne, the cathedral was partly neglected and was used for a time as a storehouse. Interest revived with the Romantic movement, which saw Gothic as a national German style. The art collector Sulpiz Boisserée campaigned tirelessly for completion and published detailed engravings of the cathedral.

Chance helped. In 1814 the architect Georg Moller found part of the medieval facade plan in Darmstadt, and in 1816 Boisserée found the other part in Paris. The builders now had an authentic medieval design to follow.

Cologne had passed to Prussia in 1815. On 4 September 1842 King Frederick William IV of Prussia laid a new foundation stone, and the Central Cathedral Building Association (Zentral-Dombau-Verein) was founded the same year to raise funds. Under the architects Ernst Friedrich Zwirner and later Richard Voigtel, builders used modern methods, including an iron roof structure, while keeping to the medieval forms.

The last stone was set on the south tower in August 1880. On 15 October 1880 Emperor Wilhelm I attended a grand celebration of the cathedral’s completion, 632 years after the first foundation stone. The twin towers, about 157 metres high, made it the tallest building in the world until 1884.

The completion was celebrated as a symbol of the new German Empire, although it came during the Kulturkampf, a bitter conflict between the Prussian state and the Catholic Church. Cologne’s own archbishop was then in exile and was absent from the ceremony.

War, restoration and world heritage

During the Second World War the cathedral was hit by around 14 aerial bombs. Vaults collapsed and windows were destroyed, but the towers survived while much of the surrounding city was flattened. Restoration of the main structure was completed by 1956, though repair work continues to this day through the cathedral’s permanent workshop, the Dombauhütte.

UNESCO listed the cathedral as a World Heritage Site in 1996. From 2004 to 2006 it was placed on the list of World Heritage in Danger because of plans for high-rise buildings nearby, which were later scaled back. In 2007 a new south transept window by the artist Gerhard Richter, made of more than 11,000 coloured glass squares, was unveiled.

Key people

• Rainald of Dassel (c. 1120–1167): archbishop of Cologne and imperial chancellor who brought the relics of the Three Kings from Milan.
• Konrad von Hochstaden (died 1261): archbishop who laid the foundation stone in 1248.
• Master Gerhard: first architect, who designed the choir on French models.
• Sulpiz Boisserée (1783–1854): collector and scholar whose campaign revived the project.
• Ernst Friedrich Zwirner (1802–1861): cathedral architect who directed the nineteenth-century completion until his death.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the cathedral was built continuously for 632 years. In reality work stopped for more than three centuries, from the early sixteenth century to 1842.
• Myth: the cathedral escaped the Second World War unharmed. Photographs of the towers rising above a ruined city suggest so, but the building was badly damaged and needed decades of repair.
• Fact: the finished building follows a medieval design. The west front was completed using the rediscovered thirteenth-century facade plan, with only limited changes.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1164: Relics of the Three Kings are brought from Milan to Cologne.
• c. 1190: Work begins on the Shrine of the Three Kings.
• 1248, 15 August: Foundation stone of the Gothic cathedral is laid.
• 1322, 27 September: The choir is consecrated.
• c. 1473: Work on the south tower stops; the crane remains on top.
• 1814 and 1816: The two parts of the medieval facade plan are found.
• 1842, 4 September: Frederick William IV lays a new foundation stone.
• 1880, 15 October: Completion is celebrated.
• 1996: UNESCO World Heritage listing.

Why it matters

Cologne Cathedral is the clearest example of a medieval building completed centuries later to its original design. It shows the power of relics and pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, and how nineteenth-century Europeans turned the Gothic past into a source of national pride.