I’ve visited a fair number of museums during my time in Cologne (I’m writing this on my last night here and once again this bloody blog is behind) and I spent some considerable time in the cathedral, so I have several things to witter on about.
This cathedral has a complex history, although that is just about always the way with structures such as this. I found an online book about the history of the cathedral, so I have read in huge detail now about how the building came together. Hence why I mentioned the wittering that is to come.
Condensing that detail down, there has been a church of some sort here for centuries. Then, as is usual, there were substantial construction efforts and expansions during the medieval period when the finances were very favourable. Then, in 1528, construction work came to an end as the money ran out.
This little stop in construction work was not just for a brief moment, work was not started again to complete the building until the nineteenth century. Chunks of the religious infrastructure were destroyed over the centuries and when, in 1794, the French revolutionary troops reached the city, they burnt all the wood in the nave and turned the building into a grain storehouse.
The Prussians took over Cologne in 1815 and they wanted the cathedral finished. They didn’t take long to start planning and the funds were ready by 1823, although it took until 1840 for the work to actually start. There were no medieval plans remaining, so they had to start reworking what they had into a finished product.
And, in 1880, the work was completed and Cologne had its finished cathedral. Work was needed in the early twentieth century as the stone weathered so quickly, but all was well. Until there was a little issue with the Second World War. Although much of the city was destroyed, and the cathedral was damaged, the bulk of the building survived unharmed.
There is constant work going on to repair past damage and ongoing efforts to deal with the weathering of the stone. There’s a stone workshop on site and it’s said by the cathedral that the scaffolding will remain up somewhere on the site as there is constant work to do. One of the sayings in the city is “when Cologne cathedral is finished, the world ends”…. And that would be just typical for the cathedral authorities if they did ever finally complete the work and that happened.