Cologne Cathedral

                        A visit to Cologne, Germany means a visit to the Cathedral, Period. According to our Guide in morning, Ido, the City identifies with the Cathedral so much that the local folks cannot pull themselves apart from it. From the WWII soldiers returning from the war to find it standing there unscathed amidst the ruins of the rest of the city, to the present-day support for all of the ongoing rehabilitation of an almost 1000-year-old building, life in Cologne, IS the Cathedral.

                                    And it is easy to see why.

                                    Thankfully someone invented photography back in the day, because that old adage, “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words” could not be truer when it comes to this subject. I dare say one could raise that Number to a million and it would still ring true.

                        We started the morning with a Walking Tour of Cologne, which meant that we were going to walk to the Cathedral and receive some tid-bits along the way and return by a slightly different route in order to receive a few more tid-bits then. The tid-bits were as fabulous as it gets, as our Guide is a true Cologne(r) and is as proud as they come.

Remember a few Posts ago I told you about how the Guides do not hesitate to discuss WWII and the Holocaust? Well, Ido is the epitome of these Guides. He would tell a story and then ask us if we wanted to hear more, as in “go ahead, don’t mince any words” and he was true to his word when it came to this. He pointed out various items that kept that era alive and unforgotten as these people have vowed not to let what happened here, under their control, be forgotten. They have accepted the guilt for their older family members and have made it clear that it cannot be forgotten nor just swept under a rug.

                        There were some lighter sides to our tour as he pointed out a few things that the random person would never have seen or understood. For example, Stone Masons. These guys had a sense of humor and with all of the carvings of everything adorning their Cathedral and Public Buildings, there was ample opportunities to “be creative.” There are several folks’ effigies that are carved up on the Cathedral, mixed in with the Saints that look suspiciously like the carver himself…..

Hmmm, let’s see…. There’s St. Peter, John the Baptist, St. John, the Virgin Mary……hey who’s that? St. ‘Bill’ the Stone Mason????

Yup!

Or how about showing us what you really think about the Town Mayor that you’ve been assigned to carve for all posterity?

Stone Masons are still hard at work stabilizing, re-surfacing, and otherwise engaged in the full-time job of keeping the Cathedral from crumbling and decaying. You may wonder how that could happen so I’ll use just one word, and you will understand: Sandstone.

            Now I’ll add a few more, acid rain, an earthquake in 1902 in the Netherlands (oops! did someone say Plate Tectonics? 😊) and rusting old ironworks, all to name but a few issues that face the Cathedral today.

As you look at the Cathedral, you do notice that it is a patchwork of colors, mainly due to the replacement of the sandstone blocks over the years with blocks of similar sandstone and other rock, but nothing identical. Believe it or not, there are masons so specialized that they can cut out an infected block and slide in its replacement without disturbing its neighbors? That is why there is a Permanent Fund and Permanent Organization to facilitate the upkeep and renewal of this grand church. It is planned to be in perpetuity and that is how it must remain, as there is no cure for old age.

I guess it’s about time that I tell you about the Cathedral itself. As you can surmise, there is so much information about the Cologne Cathedral that it is very difficult to curate what is important and what is superfluous. I will do my best to straddle that fence as getting too technical will just make you scream, and I don’t want your neighbors to come running to find out what’s wrong!

            The Cathedral was started in 1248 AD.

            Ok, that’s it, class dismissed.

                        No! No! we want more!

Are you sure? Remember, be careful what you wish for!

                        More! Tell us what happened in 1560!

Ok, hang on….

            Construction was ongoing for 312 years until it all stopped in 1560. Mainly because of the reason that most projects lay dormant…. Funding.

Now it sits for an additional 282 years until someone decided to do something about it and said, “Hey, let’s finish this thing!” Or something like that and then it took only about forty years to get it to what it looks like today. Restoration efforts began in the 1950’s (after WWII) and continue today, as you will soon see. To say that Someone is watching over this place is an understatement, especially when you look at photos from WWII and see that the Cathedral is basically untouched. We could get misty-eyed and say that the Allies did their best to not target and hit the Cathedral, but all the bombings that took place were of the “High Altitude Carpet-Bombing” type missions and everyone will tell you that it is impossible to be that accurate. Theories anyone? 😊

You may ask yourself, why so grand a Cathedral?

The answer is more complicated than just ‘because’.

It is obvious that these grand churches of yesteryear were constructed both for adoration and worship but they were also made by man which means that “we want ours to be the biggest and the best!” It was also a way of ensuring that those Pearly Gates are open when the Big Day arrives for you. BTW, this Cathedral is dedicated, in part, to Saint Peter (how convenient!) it was also constructed because about a hundred years before it was started (like in the late 1100’s) the City came into the possession of the relics of the Three Wise Men, The Magi, or The Three Kings. Now, this is Big Stuff! They were ‘acquired’ when the peeps went to war with Milan and were brought back as ‘Spoils of War’. And…”we need a cool new place to hold them ‘cuz our old one burnt down”

Wait until you see what was made for the relics, only the largest, and most ornate, golden Reliquary from the Middle Ages! Shown here:

I think that I’ll end this one here. Please read on because there is a Note Of Great Relevance posted below. See you upstairs, way up top, in the Belfry so to speak. But I may need a day or two to put it together!

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Warning: the next Post will be tied closely with this one and will show images of our ‘Once in a Lifetime, Can’t believe That I’m Here, Hand’s Down One of the Most Bestest Things I’ve Ever Done, Special Tour.’

I am telling you this now because one of the requests made of us was not to share photos of what you’ll see on Social Media. I know what they did not want to happen and that is for some idiot photo op to go viral and cause issues. They said that we could take all the photos that we wanted and share them with friends and family, but please no Public Sharing aka Social Media. So, in my attempt to make sure that I comply with those wishes, I am not going to use any Proper Names of the Cathedral that may popup in an Internet Search. This is not a private Post (Blog), but all of you are known to me and are here by invitation, so you are considered Friends and Family. Get Ready.