My tour of Europe Vol 10 - It took 600 years to build the Cologne Cathedral in Germany

Construction of the present church began in the 13th century and took, with interruptions, more than 600 years to complete. The completion of Germany's largest cathedral was celebrated as a national event in 1880, 632 years after construction had began. The cathedral is a World Heritage Site, one of the best-known architectural monuments in Germany, and Cologne's most famous landmark, described by UNESCO as an "exceptional work of human creative genius". It is visited by 20 thousand people every dayThe cathedral is one of the world's largest churches and the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe.Because of its enormous twin spires, it also presents the largest façade of any church in the world. Despite having been left incomplete during the medieval period, Cologne Cathedral eventually became unified as "a masterpiece of exceptional intrinsic value" and "a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence of Christian belief in medieval and modern Europe.The cathedral suffered seventy hits by aerial bombs during World War II. It did not collapse, but stood tall in an otherwise flattened city. The great twin spires are said to have been used as an easily recognizable navigational landmark by Allied aircraft raiding deeper into Germany in the later years of the war, which may be a reason that the cathedral was not destroyed..The most celebrated work of art in the cathedral is the Shrine of the Three Kings, a large gilded sarcophagus dating from the 13th century, and the largest reliquary in the Western world. It is traditionally believed to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men, whose bones and 2,000-year-old clothes were discovered at the opening of the shrine in 1864.The cathedral has eleven church bells, four of which are medieval.Visitors can climb 509 stone steps of the spiral staircase to a viewing platform about 98 metres above the ground. The platform gives a lovely top view of the Rhine.As a World Heritage Site, and with its convenient position on tourist routes, Cologne Cathedral is a major tourist attraction, the visitors including many who travel there as a Christian pilgrimage

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