Jason and I took our first trip in Germany to Köln (English: Cologne, no umlaut: Koeln) over the holiday week. Friends we met while living in Winston-Salem were in the Netherlands, so they hopped a train and joined us for a day while we were there! It was wonderful to be around familiar faces!
First things first in Köln: the Dom. Also known as the black cathedral, this building was 1000 years in the making (as in, the church started then, the construction on this building was not started until 1248). As you can see, it's simply stunning! The first day Jason and I both just wandered around slowly, blocking traffic, staring at the building.
Forgive the blurry picture, but have you ever seen such a majestic looking church in front of a train station before? (Tripod was left in the US for some crazy reason)
I haven't seen a whole lot of gothic churches, and certainly none on this scale before (tallest structure in the world from 1880-1884... Do you Americans know what replaced it? The Washington Monument of course!) Entering the church is free (a far cry from the churches in London), and when you look up, you have to keep looking! It's one of the tallest vaulted ceilings in the world!
We decided to pay the extra 4 euros to see the treasury, but for a building that was started in 1248, the treasury is quite small, mainly due to theft. I saw a few too many reliquaries (way too many old bone bits for me), including one from the cross! And, of course, the church was designed to hold the reliquary of the Three Wise Men. Unfortunate placement of Christmas trees and gates prevented a great pictures of the golden shrine, so you can see a better one here. The wooden box which housed the shrine originally is in the treasury (this piece here is in the main attraction at the front of the church) and etchings upon it depict the story of the Wise Men starting from when the angel appeared to them and ending when the shrine was presented to the Archbishop of Cologne in 1164 by the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa.
This nave organ was built in 1998. Unfortunately, it was too dark to get a shot of the transept organ (1948). I'm not certain I would want to sit under this one though (pews are directly underneath). It's awfully high and looks quite heavy. Though considering this church made it through WWII, I'm doing the architects a disservice (of course, the architects aren't the ones who installed this lovely organ either).
This cathedral contains so amazingly beautiful stuff not pictured, including a mosaic tile floor. The Dom is a must see in Cologne!
