My Cologne Cathedral

Gothic Cologne Cathedral 

Dr. Zachi Evenor, 2023-07-16

Cologne Cathedral, the "Dom", is an exemplary masterpiece Gothic cathedral in Cologne, Germany. It was designed in the French Rayonnant Gothic style and was completed in the German Gothic Revival style. Despite centuries of construction and wars (1248–1880), the cathedral is harmonic and appears unified as if it was constructed in one swing under one visionary master mason.

The Gothic cathedral of Cologne is beautiful. It is sublime, it is solemn, it is impressive and yet it is delicate and sophisticated and full of life... I fell in love with this wonderful Gothic structure at first sight, both as I saw it in photos and as I first saw it in real life, coming out of the train station. It was a love at first sight, that grew stronger with every further sight.

 There is marvelous atmosphere in the Gothic cathedral of Cologne... It is cool and pleasant inside... A heavenly light pours through the stained glass and pleasures the eye with flickering playful light games on the walls and large piers... The Pixels Window of Richter - a colorful mosaic of light - combines the future with the past in a digital gesture to the Rayonnant Gothic style. The pipe organ echoes through the high space and instills an atmosphere of greatness, befitting this great edifice.

And outside, the cathedral towers as a black granite mountain, with countless flowers, crockets, and monster-like gargoyles... the natural world in a nutshell. The high walls are stabilized by arch-like flying buttresses carrying a forest of pinnacles, giving the structure a pointed look. The flying buttresses and the pinnacles are formed in an exemplary order as if they were planned by a geometrician (which is indeed the case), as soldiers in the hosts of Seraphim, guarding the cathedral and keeping it balanced and safe. 

... And the highlight: the towering tracery spires (157 meters tall), "twins of a gazelle, pasturing among the lilies"... And indeed, each spire is crowned with a giant stone lily, 9 meters tall, decorated with crockets. The spires - like space rockets, strive for heaven and scrap the sky. They show their presence throughout the old city of Cologne and the Rhine River. But not merely physical presence: the spires are present in the art and culture of the city, in its symbols and the logos used by its people. The spires are there on holidays and everyday life (including bells ringing the hours). In Cologne, all the ways lead to the Dom and its spires are the compass.

...And when the sun sets down, the cathedral's black façade covers with gold, a gold created by the last light rays of the dying day... And even after night falls onto the city, the ancient cathedral stands out, present in silence and watching over the sleeping city.

 The cathedral must be seen in real life, and be experienced personally... Every photo, no matter how beautiful and impressive, is just a glimpse of the overall unmediated impression of visiting the Cologne Cathedral. There is no dead spot in the cathedral: every place, every part, every corner, and every angle has its beauty... From the inside and the outside, from the roof to the floor (with its marble and mosaics), from the façade to the apse, from the west and from the east, from the north and from the south. And not just in space, but also in time: every hour has its magic, with natural light during the day and artificial light during the night, and looks beautiful in varied ways. The cathedral must be watched and visited at different hours and parts of the day and night to see it in different lighting and enjoy the games of light, from the outside and inside.

The Gothic cathedral of Cologne is a marvel of mathematics and engineering, geometry and art, light and matter, vision and action... Mark Twain once wrote that the Duomo di Milano cannot be second to any man-made structure, he was wrong: Cologne Cathedral is the first and foremost, and the Duomo di Milano is its second.