Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom)

Cologne Cathedral, known in German as Kölner Dom, dominates the west bank of the Rhine at the heart of Cologne's old city, its twin Gothic spires rising 157 metres to form the world's tallest building from 1880 to 1884. Construction began in 1248 under Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden, who sought to house the Shrine of the Three Kings — believed to contain the relics of the Biblical Magi — in a structure that would rival France's greatest Gothic cathedrals. Building halted in 1560 with the crane still standing on the unfinished south tower, and the skeletal cathedral stood as a Romantic-era symbol of arrested German ambition for nearly three centuries. In the nineteenth century the building became a symbol of German unification, and construction resumed in 1842 under Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, completed to the original medieval plans in 1880. The cathedral sustained fourteen bomb hits during World War II but survived structurally while surrounding Cologne was almost entirely destroyed; Allied bombers used the twin spires as a navigation point and deliberately avoided hitting them. The defining treasure of the interior is the Shrine of the Three Kings (Dreikönigenschrein), a gilded reliquary completed around 1225 by goldsmith Nicholas of Verdun, measuring 220 centimetres in length and considered the largest reliquary in the Western world. The choir chapels contain medieval stained glass including the Bavarian windows donated by King Ludwig I in the 1840s and the original fourteenth-century choir windows. The south transept houses the Gero Cross, carved around 970 CE and among the oldest large-scale crucifixes in northern Europe. The south tower offers a climb of 533 steps to a viewing platform with panoramic views across the Rhine and the rooftops of Cologne. The cathedral serves as the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne, holds daily masses, and welcomes approximately six million visitors per year, making it Germany's most visited monument.