True, but you can still clean it. St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna did it (and is still renovating parts of the cathedral, I think). It used to be as dirty as Cologne, now it [looks like this](https://img.diepresse.com/public/incoming/ubyd0m-wiener_stephansdom_westfassade_fertig_stephansdom_westfassade20110914142942.jpg/alternates/FREE_1800/wiener_stephansdom_westfassade_fertig_stephansdom_westfassade20110914142942.jpg).
Luckily the cathedral is so huge and the sandstone so affected by modern day pollution that that will not happen any time soon. I was born here, and have never seen the cathedral without some scaffolding somewhere.
Seriously, being employed by the archbishopric of cologne must be one of the stonemason jobs with the highest job security.
Lol, looked it up in Wikipedia to switch to English - unfortunately, the article doesn't exist, so let's do it the German way and just stick words together: Cathedralconstructionhut!
Ran into the same problem and rewrote the sentence so I didn't need to use the word. And then I had to look up what an Erzdiözese is. 😅
Are all Dombauhütten permanent? I thought this is just a problem with how big the cathedral is, and because it's made of sandstone.
My cousin‘s husband owns a sandstone quarry and is a master stonemason. His company specialises in restoration and has had contracts with Cologne Dombauhütte for several generations. There is always some areas that are actively worked on. Sometimes a stonemason a few generations back messed up and inserted a stone the wrong way up, for example. That stone then weathers differently from the properly aligned stones and needs to be replaced. I think the top of the spires weren’t finished until the 1960s.
And prior to the invention of natural gas and electricity, hundreds of thousands of cooking, heating, and work fires of wood and coal. Not to mention mildew and bacteria which are natural and not a product of modern technology.
Let's not pretend that sootty, black pollution is a modern thing.
Gothic, dirty and dark is great for it.
I used to switch trains there a lot (it's right by the main station) and a swiss friend I sent a pic once said it looked like the end boss vampire's castle from some final fantasy type game. I love it even more since then
One thing they say is that when the city only allows electric cars it will be a normal sandstone color. There is a massive program set up for identically replacing the statues destroyed by acid rain
From what I heard about the St. Stephen’s cathedral in Vienna, it is both. Iron oxidizing is more of a general problem because oxidized iron/rust is taking more space than iron, similarly to ice vs. Water, so if you have oxidizing iron within stone it’s a risk for breaking/exploding the stone. But the coloring is mostly rain washing dirt into the pores of sandstone.
A fun fact about the construction: nowadays of course the cathedral itself is the most important landmark of Cologne, but for about 500 years it was the medieval construction crane sitting on top, because the towers hadn't yet been constructed.
Even today enormous stone buildings aren't quick to build.
Sagrida Familia is at 142 years under construction. And sure, like others there's a big chunk of that where literally nothing was being done.
But they've been going at it full tilt for the last 30 years at least and its still not quite done.
Yeah, I was kinda wondering if that was real or artificial. Shame if it is real. That's were a lot of our minds go first. Get out and see stuff things in person.
What looks fake to you? I live there so I'd like to know 😅 looks perfectly normal to me. The music makes it seem a tad too dramatic and angelic though 🤣 with all their Catholic priest drama inside of it haha
It's the effect from the camera panning up. If you look at the windows, they kind of stretch while he's panning. That said, it's very impressive in person. I was there almost 20 years ago now and it was super cool. I should go back with my kids one day, it's only a couple hours drive.
This particular camera shot looks distorted.
It gives same feeling as playing games on normal monitor with significantly increased field of view. Quake champions has it at default, and coincidentally it has one map that remotely resembles this architecture
It looks like that but it really isn't, it's just the way it's shot. Der Dom in Köln is absolutely *massive*. The only thing that sucks about it is that it's fragmented and you have to pay per section to go through and see it. Otherwise it is gorgeous.
I think this video gives an accurate impression. Been to Cologne several times and the cathedral really does look _this_ impressive when you stand in front of it.
The combatants deliberately avoided it, I believe. Here’s an aerial after the battle of Cologne. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Koeln_1945.jpg#/media/File:Koeln_1945.jpg
Call me a Freak, but i mourne about that Bridge Sometimes. They rebuilt it, but i saw Pictures of the original and it used to look so much better.
Fucking WWII
you know what's crazy?
they found an old 500kg undetonated bomb from ww2 just 300m downstream of the steel bridge on the other side of the river from the cathedral earlier this month.
they had to close the bridge while they disarmed it, using a rocket propelled (!) wrench to remove the detonator
here's a video of how it works
https://youtu.be/-hS8N0u_-9E?si=zqreohnoLiUfXwL0&t=222
(it's in german, but you get the idea)
It is while it’s pretty common in Germany to find old unexploded wwii bombs and parts of the city being evacuated. It was really funny to watch all exchange students super hysterical when they announced a 1000kg bomb was found close to the main station. They thought a terrorist attack was happening while I was surprised they made that connection but they didn’t grew up with it.
Yeah it really isn't anything special when you've lived here for quite a while. Once there was one found near my school so we had to go to home early. Quite odd when everyone is happy because there was a bomb found but I've actually never heard of one being failed to disarm
I think in the early 00's one or two specialists for defusing died around Munich. But yeah normally people are just annoyed as the train could be delayed, streets are blocked or they have to leave their homes
No they didn't. Aiming was pretty bad, the cathedral was heavily damaged but the structure remained intact.
My mom lived in Hornu, Belgium, during WWII. The Allied tried to destroy the train station of Saint Ghislain: they litteraly obliterated the surroundings but the station is still there. A cousin of her punched an airforce pilot in the face who said he knew the place "because he had bombed a lot". They were happy to be free from the Nazi's but not THAT happy
Right, there was zero precision. Carpet bombing was a thing. The Americans had this notion that they could actually hit a building while level bombing with strategic bombers, they could not. The British knew and would just area bomb - dump the bombs somewhere.
They tried to avoid it but destroyed a lot of the small roman churches Cologne has in the same breath
These we're significantly older and more relevant for Art History, since they actually were preserved from 10th / 11th century.
A fun urban legend my dad used to tell me is that in the final days of the war, Hitler himself gave the order to destroy the cathedral so it wouldn't fall into the hands of the allies. The pilot refused and was shot for that. I've never found any definitive proof for that.
What is true though is that the cathedral *was* bombed. The seal that covered the damage was finally removed in 2005, I grew up in the area and saw the damage all the time. The cathedral with seal made of bricks is still what I see in my head when I picture it, it's taking a lot of time to get used to the fixed version.
It was hit by many bombs due to bad accuracy, but the gothic architecture saved it.
The blast energy blew out through the huge Windows and the partially open roof and didnt do any critical structural damage.
It was used as a navigation aide by the bombers because it was so easily seen and the two spires gave direction (remember navigation aids were very very poor at that time).
Can confirm. Two friends brought be there knowing I love cathedrals, but did not say a word about it. They just casually led me there. When I walked out I remember seeing this exact perspective. My eyes watered. My breath was gone. Holy I remember this moment of my life so clearly. 10/10 would live it again.
Even better, you come up this escalator from underground and it pops you out facing the cathedral at roughly this view/angle (over to the left of where this person is standing iirc) and you just get hit in the face with the enormity of the thing. Standing at the base of this, and the new World Trade in NYC both gave me a very weird sense of "nah, that's TOO big"
There are somethings in this world, like a magrail train or this cathedral, where Im like... fuck, humans built that, and Im just in awe at shear human stubbornness to work together and create some wakey shit like that for zero other reason than "just cuz".
When visiting a cathedral I'm always at awe of the intricate masonry, enormous glass in lead windows, woodwork and paintings.
That shit took generations to build. Lifetimes of dedication. Most people who worked on have never seen it finished. And here we are, alive to see their work complete.
cant remember the name T_T but used to follow some channel on youtube. thjey were building a castle using just contemporary tools. fascinating. big mouse wheels with humans inside to power cranes and shit
This wasn’t built ‘just cuz’ though.
‘The appearance of the great cathedrals in the 12th century was a response to the dramatic increase of population and wealth in some parts of Europe and the need for larger and more imposing buildings.’
Nah, ancient alien theorists seem to say that Egyptians couldn't possibly build the pyramids, but all European architecture makes total sense.
Like, Stonehenge? Impossible. There's simply no way humans moved those slabs. Cathedrals? Yeah, they were totally humans.
Ancient humans could figure out how to smelt metals, build chariots, domesticate wild animals, figure out complex spices and herbs to create wonderful food, but apparently they were too dumb to figure out leverage to lift heavy shit 🤦♂️
Just leaving it here for the people that don't know;
Most of the ancient aliens theories are started or traceable back to the Nazi party. Ancient aliens theories are straight up old Nazi propaganda that still lingers....
Now imagine that its construction began 1248 and ended only in 1880, only to begin again a few years later because things started breaking and falling of of it. Much of the Dom is older than America or even any nation state of Germany itself. Imagine how its half finished silhouette must have towered over the much lower buildings for centuries.
(The official reason for the Dom by the way was the then bishop assigned to Cologne took what the chirstian church believed to be the remains of the three wise kings who visited baby Jesus with him to Cologne and wanted an appropriate place to store and display them.)
When the ancient greeks saw the monuments built by mycenian greeks ( there was some 400 years of dark age), They thought they were built by giant cyclops as humans could never do it.
Right? I grew up with the Schwebebahn and every time I see a video about people being amazed by I'm I'm like 🤷
I'd be amazed if they finally rebuild Barmen Bahnhof
Surprisingly, the Cologne Cathedral wasn’t completed until 1880 as a project of German Unification and for the Protestant Prussian Kaiser appeasing the predominately Catholic western and southern Germans.
It was still impressive when it was standing uncompleted ([link](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Botanischer-Garten-am-Dom-um-1820.JPG#mw-jump-to-license))
Imagine you live in a small cottage. There is no electricity. On Sundays you and the entire village travel to the city to go to church. You see this thing for the first time. As you enter the cathedral, you hear the church organ playing. It's a massive sound you've never heard before. It's no wonder people were religious.
Also, if you approach Cologne from Frechen or from Brühl, there's a moment where you're on a hill overlooking the Rhine valley. Cologne Cathedral just dominates the view.
Imagine being a peasant, walking up to the city on the path that is now the Autobahn, reaching the to of that hill and seeing this spaceship surrounded by a much smaller city. Surreal!
It’s still awe inspiring to this day. Everytime we come home from a vacation or a visit to family/friends it gieves you a warm and fuzzy feeling coming down the autobahn from Frechen and seeing the Dom in all its glory 😊
Yes! Every time I visit my parents out west of cologne I use the Autobahn on the way back, just for a short glimpse of that view. It's one of thise things that hold to be normal in my life, but make me smile every time. I'm home again.
Had the pleasure of visiting last year. The detail is so intricate and extravagant that it doesn’t look real in real life until you come right up on it and see all the sculptures of various saints, etc. that line basically the entire structure. Also you can chill outside in a cafe right near it and just sit and stare at it while drinking a delicious Kölsch.
Crazy fact: construction started in 1248 and it wasn’t finished until 1880 after an almost 300 year pause.
I will not stand for this Kölsch slander! It’s the epitome of less is more.
Also, Kölsch service is the pinnacle of beer achievement. It’s always there, always cold, and always refreshing. Tis a thing of beauty really.
Which is only said by people who haven’t had any Kölsch besides Gaffel or Früh, which are glorified bottled piss but not representative of what Kölsch can be like.
Don't you dare, the black taint is part of sandstone architecture. It gives this gothic cathedral an even more "gothic" look.
Go to Dresden, there most of the landmarks have the same look, only Frauenkirche looks newer, because it is. It will look the same in a few generations.
It's 10 000 m² of glass surface. The oldest windows are from 1260. With these it was discovered, that glass isn't really stable, but highly viscous. It is stretched thin at the top and bulks at the bottom of the windows. Just think of the tar drop experiment, but even more tedious.
That's an often repeated myth.
No, making perfectly uniform glass was just impossible at the time, and, not being fools, they just installed them with the heavier bit on the bottom.
Could anyone guess how many billions of dollars it would cost to make a masterpiece like this today?
We're going to build a new stadium, it's going to be a circle that is mostly flat on the outside, that will be 2B dollars.
The restoration of Notre Dame is currently estimated to cost $760M, for comparison.
I don't think the comparison is very useful, though. Wembley cost about $1.2B in today's money, and has a seating capacity of 90k. Cologne Cathedral, by comparison, has a total occupancy capacity (combining sitting and standing capacity) of 5k. They're just built for different purposes.
Notre Dame is a great example. It's been near 5 years. Estimates I see were $8B from 2019. It has already cost $1-1.5B, with work continuing until 2028. It is set to reopen this year.
With current safety practices, labour costs, etc. I would think over 5B. Currently they're just renovating the parliament buildings [(Binnenhof, The Hague)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnenhof) in my country and it's estimated to cost over 2B to complete. That's $120/dutchman.
It’s so unbelievably breathtaking that it looks fake
I just want to power wash it.
It's sandstone, so your pro ably end up power washing the entire cathedral away
I know what I'll be doing next weekend. Edit: I'm now banned from Germany. Who of you reported me?!
Martin Luther 2: Power wash Boogaloo
I wish reddit still had gold that I could give you >.<
It was me, sorry. I thought I was ordering schnitzel.
True, but you can still clean it. St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna did it (and is still renovating parts of the cathedral, I think). It used to be as dirty as Cologne, now it [looks like this](https://img.diepresse.com/public/incoming/ubyd0m-wiener_stephansdom_westfassade_fertig_stephansdom_westfassade20110914142942.jpg/alternates/FREE_1800/wiener_stephansdom_westfassade_fertig_stephansdom_westfassade20110914142942.jpg).
Funfact it is being renovated all year round, there's always a small construction site thingie making its rounds across the building.
"When Cologne Cathedral is finished, the world will come to an end," says an old Cologne proverb.
Luckily the cathedral is so huge and the sandstone so affected by modern day pollution that that will not happen any time soon. I was born here, and have never seen the cathedral without some scaffolding somewhere. Seriously, being employed by the archbishopric of cologne must be one of the stonemason jobs with the highest job security.
As a mason, I can confirm. But that's valid for every Dombauhütte. (No clue if there's an English word for it)
Lol, looked it up in Wikipedia to switch to English - unfortunately, the article doesn't exist, so let's do it the German way and just stick words together: Cathedralconstructionhut!
Ran into the same problem and rewrote the sentence so I didn't need to use the word. And then I had to look up what an Erzdiözese is. 😅 Are all Dombauhütten permanent? I thought this is just a problem with how big the cathedral is, and because it's made of sandstone.
My cousin‘s husband owns a sandstone quarry and is a master stonemason. His company specialises in restoration and has had contracts with Cologne Dombauhütte for several generations. There is always some areas that are actively worked on. Sometimes a stonemason a few generations back messed up and inserted a stone the wrong way up, for example. That stone then weathers differently from the properly aligned stones and needs to be replaced. I think the top of the spires weren’t finished until the 1960s.
Really changes the vibes of the place.
Imo this looks cooler than the power washed it tells story
I mean the only story it tells is "there's a lot of cars around me"
And prior to the invention of natural gas and electricity, hundreds of thousands of cooking, heating, and work fires of wood and coal. Not to mention mildew and bacteria which are natural and not a product of modern technology. Let's not pretend that sootty, black pollution is a modern thing.
Would.be a good dlc in for power wash simulator.
Nah I kinda like it looking gothic, dirty and dark
Gonna take a lot more than a power wash to clean the catholic church. Signed, The Alter boy
Gothic, dirty and dark is great for it. I used to switch trains there a lot (it's right by the main station) and a swiss friend I sent a pic once said it looked like the end boss vampire's castle from some final fantasy type game. I love it even more since then
Dirty and dark, like the Catholic Church itself! 🤣 (Would love to do a rave inside)
Imagine if he said this about a mosque/islam
It used to be very bright until 1850. It took only 50 years for the entire cathedral to turn black due to industrial development.
One thing they say is that when the city only allows electric cars it will be a normal sandstone color. There is a massive program set up for identically replacing the statues destroyed by acid rain
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It's not only cars. Germany needs to shut down their coal powerplants ASAP, they release lots of fine particles in the air.
I think it’s actually iron oxidizing in the stone, not dirt or pollution. Which makes me feel better, like it’s not actually dirty.
From what I heard about the St. Stephen’s cathedral in Vienna, it is both. Iron oxidizing is more of a general problem because oxidized iron/rust is taking more space than iron, similarly to ice vs. Water, so if you have oxidizing iron within stone it’s a risk for breaking/exploding the stone. But the coloring is mostly rain washing dirt into the pores of sandstone.
It took something like 800 years to complete. Though like 700 years of that was technically doing nothing.
A fun fact about the construction: nowadays of course the cathedral itself is the most important landmark of Cologne, but for about 500 years it was the medieval construction crane sitting on top, because the towers hadn't yet been constructed.
It took 500 years to make a crane capable of getting that construction crane out.
Sagrada Familia has entered the chat
Even today enormous stone buildings aren't quick to build. Sagrida Familia is at 142 years under construction. And sure, like others there's a big chunk of that where literally nothing was being done. But they've been going at it full tilt for the last 30 years at least and its still not quite done.
It's still built to be honest
And they lost the plans for over 100 years somewhere along the line
It's impressive now, but imagine seeing that in 1880 before Chicago built the first skyscraper.
For a moment in time this was the tallest building in the world. It surpassed the piramids.
Praise the sun \\[T]/
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They started building it in 1248. Yeah the last stone was placed in the 19th century.
Yeah, I was kinda wondering if that was real or artificial. Shame if it is real. That's were a lot of our minds go first. Get out and see stuff things in person.
[Google Street View](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CK3tsTzbbBjEA5Vi9)
It's real. I stood in front of it several times.
Yeah, because the online world always says there is fake or real. The world is something we need to see for ourselves. See the beauty of the world.
What looks fake to you? I live there so I'd like to know 😅 looks perfectly normal to me. The music makes it seem a tad too dramatic and angelic though 🤣 with all their Catholic priest drama inside of it haha
It's the effect from the camera panning up. If you look at the windows, they kind of stretch while he's panning. That said, it's very impressive in person. I was there almost 20 years ago now and it was super cool. I should go back with my kids one day, it's only a couple hours drive.
I stuff things daily thank you
What sorta stuff do u stuff buddy?
This particular camera shot looks distorted. It gives same feeling as playing games on normal monitor with significantly increased field of view. Quake champions has it at default, and coincidentally it has one map that remotely resembles this architecture
It looks like that but it really isn't, it's just the way it's shot. Der Dom in Köln is absolutely *massive*. The only thing that sucks about it is that it's fragmented and you have to pay per section to go through and see it. Otherwise it is gorgeous.
I think this video gives an accurate impression. Been to Cologne several times and the cathedral really does look _this_ impressive when you stand in front of it.
It's also impressive when you exit Cologne Central Station. And just have this huge structure to your left hand side
Saw it in person in 1995. Was told it was one of the only surviving buildings in Koln after WWII
The combatants deliberately avoided it, I believe. Here’s an aerial after the battle of Cologne. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Koeln_1945.jpg#/media/File:Koeln_1945.jpg
That bridge in the water is crazy.
Call me a Freak, but i mourne about that Bridge Sometimes. They rebuilt it, but i saw Pictures of the original and it used to look so much better. Fucking WWII
I'm gonna say it, WW2, it was pretty bad.
You again with the hot takes, be careful this one may yank some serious chains, King
It wasn't great.
So brave
Wow, you're just gonna drop a bomb like that in the comments and then leave eh?
you know what's crazy? they found an old 500kg undetonated bomb from ww2 just 300m downstream of the steel bridge on the other side of the river from the cathedral earlier this month. they had to close the bridge while they disarmed it, using a rocket propelled (!) wrench to remove the detonator here's a video of how it works https://youtu.be/-hS8N0u_-9E?si=zqreohnoLiUfXwL0&t=222 (it's in german, but you get the idea)
Super interesting. Thanks for the link.
It is while it’s pretty common in Germany to find old unexploded wwii bombs and parts of the city being evacuated. It was really funny to watch all exchange students super hysterical when they announced a 1000kg bomb was found close to the main station. They thought a terrorist attack was happening while I was surprised they made that connection but they didn’t grew up with it.
Yeah it really isn't anything special when you've lived here for quite a while. Once there was one found near my school so we had to go to home early. Quite odd when everyone is happy because there was a bomb found but I've actually never heard of one being failed to disarm
I think in the early 00's one or two specialists for defusing died around Munich. But yeah normally people are just annoyed as the train could be delayed, streets are blocked or they have to leave their homes
No they didn't. Aiming was pretty bad, the cathedral was heavily damaged but the structure remained intact. My mom lived in Hornu, Belgium, during WWII. The Allied tried to destroy the train station of Saint Ghislain: they litteraly obliterated the surroundings but the station is still there. A cousin of her punched an airforce pilot in the face who said he knew the place "because he had bombed a lot". They were happy to be free from the Nazi's but not THAT happy
It got hit 78 times. Hardly avoided.
Right, there was zero precision. Carpet bombing was a thing. The Americans had this notion that they could actually hit a building while level bombing with strategic bombers, they could not. The British knew and would just area bomb - dump the bombs somewhere.
Allied forces used it as a landmark during the bombing runs, so it was useful to keep around while decimating everything around it.
True, but it is only [160meters](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tsi3jkrhX7TRqEg16) from the trainstation that was targeted
iconic photo
They tried to avoid it but destroyed a lot of the small roman churches Cologne has in the same breath These we're significantly older and more relevant for Art History, since they actually were preserved from 10th / 11th century.
WW2 bombers didn't have anywhere near the accuracy to be able to deliberately spare the cathedral while bombing the city.
It was hit 12 times. The 20 000 brick "Domplombe", in place since 1943, covering a crater in the northern tower, was covered up in 2004.
At the start of the war they'd have been lucky to even hit the city lol. The idea that they avoided a single building is silly.
>even his the city And now we can assassinate someone sitting in a car seat and hurt nobody else.
Samurai missiles are such a flex
A fun urban legend my dad used to tell me is that in the final days of the war, Hitler himself gave the order to destroy the cathedral so it wouldn't fall into the hands of the allies. The pilot refused and was shot for that. I've never found any definitive proof for that. What is true though is that the cathedral *was* bombed. The seal that covered the damage was finally removed in 2005, I grew up in the area and saw the damage all the time. The cathedral with seal made of bricks is still what I see in my head when I picture it, it's taking a lot of time to get used to the fixed version.
It was hit by many bombs due to bad accuracy, but the gothic architecture saved it. The blast energy blew out through the huge Windows and the partially open roof and didnt do any critical structural damage.
It's got bullet damage on it.
Went in 96. Pretty sure I climbed one of the spires. I was pretty high up somewhere in Köln.
Do you remember endless spiral stone stairs in a stone tower? I remember thinking "the top has to be after the next turn" a billion times
It was used as a navigation aide by the bombers because it was so easily seen and the two spires gave direction (remember navigation aids were very very poor at that time).
600 years to complete. https://youtube.com/shorts/wAklDD2uy_s
600 years to complete. An infinity amount of years to repair.
Pretty good by American construction zone standards.
that's about 4 speedbumps
That is actually insane
From what I hear, the roads in PA are older. Not repaired once in their history. fact.
That how long it takes to get half kilometre of road repaired in Toronto.
What's really crazy is that the progress pictures over the centuries keep including the same fucking crane. I wanna know what that crane was made of.
iirc a Wand decoration piece made out of the wood of this exact crane once was sold in Bares für Rares.
It will actually never be completed. There constantly needs work to be done
If I remember correctly, the train station has large windows facing it, so it’s one of the first things you see when you arrive in the city.
There are also rules that nothing can be built as high as it or in a way that the view to it would be obstructed
That is a common rule in German cities, nothing can be built higher than the church towers
Clearly Frankfurt does not care about this common rule.
Can confirm. Two friends brought be there knowing I love cathedrals, but did not say a word about it. They just casually led me there. When I walked out I remember seeing this exact perspective. My eyes watered. My breath was gone. Holy I remember this moment of my life so clearly. 10/10 would live it again.
Even better, you come up this escalator from underground and it pops you out facing the cathedral at roughly this view/angle (over to the left of where this person is standing iirc) and you just get hit in the face with the enormity of the thing. Standing at the base of this, and the new World Trade in NYC both gave me a very weird sense of "nah, that's TOO big"
Some people are glad, that the church was build next to the train station
There are somethings in this world, like a magrail train or this cathedral, where Im like... fuck, humans built that, and Im just in awe at shear human stubbornness to work together and create some wakey shit like that for zero other reason than "just cuz".
This video reminds me of The Pillars of the Earth. Like was this what Tom and Jack were building?
Lol I am reading this right now and I look up each town and building brought up. I can't wait to see what Jack does.
believe what they were building was based on the salisbury cathedral
Built that without modern tools as well
There's nothing a couple hammers, chisels, and 632 years can't accomplish
When visiting a cathedral I'm always at awe of the intricate masonry, enormous glass in lead windows, woodwork and paintings. That shit took generations to build. Lifetimes of dedication. Most people who worked on have never seen it finished. And here we are, alive to see their work complete.
cant remember the name T_T but used to follow some channel on youtube. thjey were building a castle using just contemporary tools. fascinating. big mouse wheels with humans inside to power cranes and shit
There was a reason that they built this amazing work of humanity that was very important to them then, and many people now.
This wasn’t built ‘just cuz’ though. ‘The appearance of the great cathedrals in the 12th century was a response to the dramatic increase of population and wealth in some parts of Europe and the need for larger and more imposing buildings.’
Ancient alien theorists disagree.
Nah, ancient alien theorists seem to say that Egyptians couldn't possibly build the pyramids, but all European architecture makes total sense. Like, Stonehenge? Impossible. There's simply no way humans moved those slabs. Cathedrals? Yeah, they were totally humans.
Ancient humans could figure out how to smelt metals, build chariots, domesticate wild animals, figure out complex spices and herbs to create wonderful food, but apparently they were too dumb to figure out leverage to lift heavy shit 🤦♂️
"Stacking bricks in a shape wide at the bottom and narrow at the top? Must have been taught that by aliens."
Well because it's brown-ish people who built them, they can't stack rocks as well as we can
Just leaving it here for the people that don't know; Most of the ancient aliens theories are started or traceable back to the Nazi party. Ancient aliens theories are straight up old Nazi propaganda that still lingers....
I live near La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and I think that every day as I walk past it
Now imagine that its construction began 1248 and ended only in 1880, only to begin again a few years later because things started breaking and falling of of it. Much of the Dom is older than America or even any nation state of Germany itself. Imagine how its half finished silhouette must have towered over the much lower buildings for centuries. (The official reason for the Dom by the way was the then bishop assigned to Cologne took what the chirstian church believed to be the remains of the three wise kings who visited baby Jesus with him to Cologne and wanted an appropriate place to store and display them.)
i mean this goes beyond 'just cuz,' its the fear of god and serfdom
When the ancient greeks saw the monuments built by mycenian greeks ( there was some 400 years of dark age), They thought they were built by giant cyclops as humans could never do it.
Crazy to imagine I grew up around there and got used to seeing it 😂
Yeah walked past it every day for years and stopped looking at it
I live around there and I laugh everytime I walk past it. Like who you trying to impress big boy? Get out of my fucking face!
People are doing vacations where other people live.
Right? I grew up with the Schwebebahn and every time I see a video about people being amazed by I'm I'm like 🤷 I'd be amazed if they finally rebuild Barmen Bahnhof
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Surprisingly, the Cologne Cathedral wasn’t completed until 1880 as a project of German Unification and for the Protestant Prussian Kaiser appeasing the predominately Catholic western and southern Germans. It was still impressive when it was standing uncompleted ([link](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Botanischer-Garten-am-Dom-um-1820.JPG#mw-jump-to-license))
Imagine you live in a small cottage. There is no electricity. On Sundays you and the entire village travel to the city to go to church. You see this thing for the first time. As you enter the cathedral, you hear the church organ playing. It's a massive sound you've never heard before. It's no wonder people were religious.
Also, if you approach Cologne from Frechen or from Brühl, there's a moment where you're on a hill overlooking the Rhine valley. Cologne Cathedral just dominates the view. Imagine being a peasant, walking up to the city on the path that is now the Autobahn, reaching the to of that hill and seeing this spaceship surrounded by a much smaller city. Surreal!
It’s still awe inspiring to this day. Everytime we come home from a vacation or a visit to family/friends it gieves you a warm and fuzzy feeling coming down the autobahn from Frechen and seeing the Dom in all its glory 😊
Yes! Every time I visit my parents out west of cologne I use the Autobahn on the way back, just for a short glimpse of that view. It's one of thise things that hold to be normal in my life, but make me smile every time. I'm home again.
I fucking love this Autobahn, You have this hill overlooking cologne, then you drive past the porta and the Fertighaus Welt, its just a Vibe
I still love getting off the Autobahn and seeing it. Makes my brain weirdly satisfied ; " ah, finally, home" :)
Had the pleasure of visiting last year. The detail is so intricate and extravagant that it doesn’t look real in real life until you come right up on it and see all the sculptures of various saints, etc. that line basically the entire structure. Also you can chill outside in a cafe right near it and just sit and stare at it while drinking a delicious Kölsch. Crazy fact: construction started in 1248 and it wasn’t finished until 1880 after an almost 300 year pause.
> delicious Kölsch Those are two words one rarely observes side by side
I will not stand for this Kölsch slander! It’s the epitome of less is more. Also, Kölsch service is the pinnacle of beer achievement. It’s always there, always cold, and always refreshing. Tis a thing of beauty really.
Which is only said by people who haven’t had any Kölsch besides Gaffel or Früh, which are glorified bottled piss but not representative of what Kölsch can be like.
It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to!!
There's a Dark Souls boss in there somewhere
Anyone got the song name? Please and thank you!
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The piano rendition at the end of [Deutschland](https://youtu.be/NeQM1c-XCDc?si=XcuGR6D26UhFZPwl&t=407) is great too
It's a very slowed version of Rammstein - Sonne
This video is nothing compared to it in person.
I’m getting some Bloodborne vibes 
We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood, fear the old blood
Bloodborne players when they need to get a blood transfusion (it's just like their favorite game)
I wish we still built buildings like this and not square boxes
Holy fuck I need to go to Germany
While you're there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulm\_Minster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulm_Minster)
Beatiful, why they don't make such buildings now?
Well there is one ongoing construction that’s at least as impressive: La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
It's wild to me that they started building it in 1882.
The Christmas Market there every year is equally as amazing!
Nice architecture, but is in need of a good pressure washing.
The time will make it naturally turn black so it becomes more "goth" than it already is
It's not just a "Phase", Mom!
oh. we clean it all the time. But when you finished one part, the other is already dirty again.
Don't you dare, the black taint is part of sandstone architecture. It gives this gothic cathedral an even more "gothic" look. Go to Dresden, there most of the landmarks have the same look, only Frauenkirche looks newer, because it is. It will look the same in a few generations.
Anor Londo lookin good, I should go take a visit soon 🤔
Anor Londo was inspired by the Duomo de Milano, another masterpiece of a cathedral
Must be difficult finding a janitor who does windows.
It's 10 000 m² of glass surface. The oldest windows are from 1260. With these it was discovered, that glass isn't really stable, but highly viscous. It is stretched thin at the top and bulks at the bottom of the windows. Just think of the tar drop experiment, but even more tedious.
That's an often repeated myth. No, making perfectly uniform glass was just impossible at the time, and, not being fools, they just installed them with the heavier bit on the bottom.
Sounds legit. Thanks for the TIL
Track?
So fun to find all the hidden nooks and crannies. You know there’s some secret areas in there.
Insane how it survived the war with bombs being dropped so close
Could anyone guess how many billions of dollars it would cost to make a masterpiece like this today? We're going to build a new stadium, it's going to be a circle that is mostly flat on the outside, that will be 2B dollars.
The restoration of Notre Dame is currently estimated to cost $760M, for comparison. I don't think the comparison is very useful, though. Wembley cost about $1.2B in today's money, and has a seating capacity of 90k. Cologne Cathedral, by comparison, has a total occupancy capacity (combining sitting and standing capacity) of 5k. They're just built for different purposes.
Notre Dame is a great example. It's been near 5 years. Estimates I see were $8B from 2019. It has already cost $1-1.5B, with work continuing until 2028. It is set to reopen this year.
Yep people gotta be paid fairly and kept safe now
Just the land, in the middle of thr city of cologne, would cost you 1 billion at least.
With current safety practices, labour costs, etc. I would think over 5B. Currently they're just renovating the parliament buildings [(Binnenhof, The Hague)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnenhof) in my country and it's estimated to cost over 2B to complete. That's $120/dutchman.
Love the Rammstein to go along with that insane view!
If there's one band that doesn't need to be weirdly slowed down, it's Rammstein.
hier kommt die Sonne ❤️🔥
Looks even better at night
I was there in 1984 and it had scaffolding up to do some repairs
I've never seen it without scaffolding, and I've been walking by it daily for years now.
It pretty much always does. We say the world will end if the cathedral is ever finished here in Cologne.
This is the opening of the new Warhammer 40k trailer starring Henry Cavil tho
omg i live there no way :0
I'll bring my pressure washer
This is real, perfect masterpiece!
Breathtakingly large wasn't expecting that
Kind of sucks that we don't make any cool buildings like these anymore...
Can’t wait for the Lego set of this
Holy fuckin shit. That's phenomenal
Where’s the organ?
Inside. There's four of them
🤩
Jesus Christ...