Kaiserdom St. Bartholomäus

The Kaiserdom St. Bartholomäus, at Domplatz 14 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is a Gothic collegiate church that is called a cathedral because of its imperial role, although it was never the seat of a bishop. The Golden Bull of 1356 fixed Frankfurt as the place where the German king was elected, and from 1562 to 1792 the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were crowned here, beginning with Maximilian II and ending with Francis II. The present hall church grew mainly between the 13th and 15th centuries on the site of earlier Carolingian and Romanesque buildings, and the choir, the Wahlkapelle where the electors met and the cloister belong to different building phases. The great west tower, planned in the 15th century by the master builder Madern Gerthener, was left unfinished for centuries and completed in 1877 in red sandstone, rising about 95 metres above the old town. Inside, visitors find late medieval stone and wood work including choir stalls, tombs of local patricians and the Maria-Schlaf-Altar, while the cathedral museum in the cloister shows vestments, liturgical objects and treasures associated with the church and the coronations. The architecture is Gothic, with a tall nave, pointed arches and sandstone surfaces that changed colour over the centuries. In March 1944 air raids burned the roof and much of the interior, but the walls and tower survived, and the church was rebuilt and reopened in the early 1950s. Archaeological work around the building has uncovered traces of earlier structures, giving the area its long layered history. The cathedral is still an active Catholic parish church, so visits are shaped by services and liturgical events. The tower can be climbed in season for a view across the Römerberg, the Main and the skyscrapers of the banking district, an unusual pairing of medieval and modern Frankfurt. The Dom stands beside the Dom-Römer quarter and the Archäologisches Museum, so it fits easily into a walk through the old town.