Visiting the famous Cologne Cathedral

The cologne Cathedral (all photos: Alexander Verbeek)

I’m standing in a crowded train, on my way back to the Netherlands. So I won’t write a long story but I do have some pictures for you.

This afternoon, I was in the largest city in western Germany, Cologne, which is best known for the famous Cologne Cathedral that holds the shrine of The Three Wise Men, a holy relic brought by Archbishop Rainald von Dassel back in the mid-12th century. Because of these relics, the cathedral became one of the most important places of pilgrimage in Europe.

The impressive cathedral covers almost 8,000 square meters of floor space and can hold more than 20,000 people. The Gothic cathedral features the second-tallest spires in Northern Europe; on the crowded square, I could only capture the full cathedral in a wide-angle photo that looks steeply upwards (and I know: the man on the right didn’t do any funny walks)

Fun fact: at 157.38 meters, the northern tower is 7cm taller than the southern one.

Due to the building’s impressive Gothic architecture, the shrine of the Three Wise Men, the outstanding stained-glass windows and the many other important works of art, UNESCO declared Cologne Cathedral a World Heritage Site in 1996.

A detail of one of the stained-glass windows.