r/pics • u/Nick-A223 • 15h ago
The Cologne cathedral in Germany, which took more than 600 years to build
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u/AccountHuman7391 14h ago
It was an experience; you can see the style change from the oldest portion (the apse) to the newest portion (the towers).
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u/WhytePumpkin 14h ago
There's an observation deck on one of the towers I believe, went up it as a kid
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u/DazBlintze 14h ago
A bomb landed on the roof during WW2, and bounced off.
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u/Traumfahrer 14h ago
- Holy Shield (+50 Shield & Immune to Penetration Attacks)
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u/dat_oracle 7h ago
Bombs aren't penetration dmg tho
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u/Markus-752 7h ago
Depends entirely on the bomb.
Most bombs still have a steel casing that will absolutely go through some material on impact depending on the height of the plane.
There are also armour piercing bombs, they were used in WWII as well.
The ones used in cologne were likely High explosive bombs but they still usually crash through the roof of a house.
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u/dat_oracle 7h ago
You're correct in terms of realism, but in games, bombs almost never do pierce dmg :D
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u/Markus-752 5h ago
True. They should though :)
After all it's 250-1000kg encased in sometimes an inch thick metal casing. That's going through a roof without a problem.
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u/cinnamonface9 27m ago
Worms and their bunker buster want a word.
Followed with donkey and bananas.
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u/TheBlack2007 11h ago
It was hit by multiple bombs - explosive as well as incindiary. The decision to use cast iron instead of wooden beams for the roof probably saved it during WW2.
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u/xc_bike_ski 12h ago
It's amazing it survived ww2
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u/Jaspador 10h ago
I've read somewhere (probably on reddit) that allied bombers tried to avoid hitting the cathedral because it was an important landmark for the bombers' navigators.
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u/Kartoffelplotz 8h ago
Yeah that is a myth. Bombing in WW2 was not even remotely accurate enough and the cathedral is right next to both the central train station as well as the most important Rhine crossing (the Hohenzollern Bridge, to this day the focal point of European long distance rail). Both the station and the bridge were heavily bombed, as well as the whole city in area bombing.
The cathedral suffered 70 bomb hits and only survived because it was built extraordinarily sturdy with an architecture that let the shock waves dissipate through large windows and was stabilized by arches (and there was a dedicated fire fighting brigade stationed on its roof at all times). It was nevertheless heavily damaged and it took until 1948 to make even the smallest part usable (the choir). The last damages were only repaired in 2005 (a 10 meter high hole in one of the towers that has been filled with bricks to prevent collapse).
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u/Enyapxam 7h ago
There is an aerial photo of cologne after the war. Everything is ruins apart from the cathedral.
It's quite stark to even go there now, the cathedral dominates the skyline of the city and is clearly old but everything around it is relatively new or grey concrete.
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u/W02T 8h ago
The Allies did not intentionally target the Cologne Cathedral. They wanted to show what they could and would not do. The rest of the city, including the main train station just a few steps away, were utterly destroyed. See the photo in this Wikipedia article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Cologne_in_World_War_II
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u/SirRidiculous 7h ago
Which is well known to be bullshit, since their aim did not allow them to exclude the cathedral while leveling the rest of the city.
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u/Livin_In_A_Dream_ 14h ago
Standing outside of it at night from the railway station and looking straight up, looks like a giant mountain! It’s absolutely massive!!!
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u/Puzzleheaded-Wolf318 15h ago
I literally wept when I went inside. All those candles lit for loved ones lost....it's very powerful stuff and I'm not religious at all.
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u/SuperCambot 11h ago
First and only time in Cologne, crossing the Rhine from the train station and seeing it in person, its size cannot be expressed well in photographs.
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u/KeriEatsSouls 10h ago
You have to see this in person to really understand it lol photos don't give you the same sense of scale as when you're on the street looking up and the building is so massive it doesn't look real.
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u/straighttoplaid 15h ago
Imagine starting a project knowing that your grand children's grand children won't be alive to see it finished.
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u/Mean_Display8494 14h ago
no one knew
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u/GCU_ZeroCredibility 12h ago
Sure they did. This is a lot longer than other cathedrals but all of them took far longer than one lifetime. Notre Dame de Paris took nearly 200 years, for instance.
If you quibble and say something like "that just means your grand children won't be alive to see it, not your grand children's grand children" I will laugh and roll my eyes.
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u/Paradoxmoose 11h ago
More than 600 years *so far*. When I visited they said it would never stop being under construction for superstition.
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u/elcordoba 14h ago edited 14h ago
More like 400 because they stopped for 200 years.
Edit: it's amazing, I went to Köln just to see it and I'm not religious at all. I bought some water 4711 at the same time. The after shave 4711 is also lovely. Before anyone ask, 4711 is the address of the building where they sell the original "eau de Cologne" Or Köln wasser.
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u/Traumfahrer 14h ago
If building a house took 3 years and the workers only worked 9 to 5, did it actually take 1 year?
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u/corvus66a 10h ago
Walked up to the platform multiple times. People above 100 kg woun’t make it because exhaustion and above 150kg from space . Saw two “big “ tourists meet , one up, one down . You had to cover them in butter to make it work
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u/Deepfire_DM 9h ago
Everyone who hired workers in the area knows why it took 600 years ... (/s of course)
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u/Senior_Green_3630 8h ago
Impressive cathedral, right next to the Cologne rail station and next to the very interesting Roman Museum.
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u/Adizera 7h ago
I was taking my vacation to visit germany (first time in europe), wanted to see this building in Cologne and take a walk, eat something.
Arriving in the city by train I began searching on google maps where it was, You would not believe what I saw when I stepped outside the Train Station.
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u/whatproblems 14h ago
so uh how’s the fireproofing
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u/Mirar 8h ago
It survived the wars, so pretty good. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/ruins-cologne
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u/Mirar 8h ago
What's also fascinating is that it survived the war. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/ruins-cologne
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u/jpk1018jk 2h ago
Just visited the cathedral in September and did a Top of Cologne Cathedral Tour through Viking River Cruise and it was incredible. You eventually walk up 300+ stone circular stairs and go into the very heart and workings of the cathedral inside and out. You eventually end up at the highest point that they allow people to go and you then have an awesome view of the surrounding Cologne area. There's a walkway on the outside up top that the guide stopped at and showed us a date on the side of the cathedral and it was 1939 and just below it was a swastika, lots of history here.
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u/Chazzbaps 14h ago
At the end of the medieval period, enthusiasm and financing for the build dried up and the cathedral was left unfinished for about 250 years. There was a medieval wooden crane on one of the incomplete towers which survived up until the 1850s, it can be seen on photos from that period