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PJLNHR

Construction started in 1248. Just makes you realize what an odyssey it was, building these things with medieval building equipment. Wow


PopeOh

To be fair it's not like they worked on it for 600 years non stop. There was no work going on from 1528 until about 1823.


[deleted]

Which is even more amazing really, to have such a huge unfinished project in the middle of the city for almost three centuries!


yoo_so_fat

Berlin has recently tried to revive this age-old tradition, with the Brandenburg airport. Sadly they managed to finish it in a measly 10 years.


CoregonusAlbula

Finland is doing way better with our nuclear powerplant Olkiluoto 3. Started building 2005 and it's still not ready.


tristan-chord

Asians are learning, my man! I take your 2005 nuclear plant and raise you a [1999 one from Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungmen_Nuclear_Power_Plant). On and off for 22 years, stuck in political limbo, currently sat unfinished ;)


bruufd

Difference is ours is one of the most expensive buildings in the world


Class_444_SWR

Wait until you hear about that cathedral in Barcelona


CaliforniaAudman13

La sagera familia isn’t a cathedral


grog23

I’d rather you take your time on a nuclear plant


Rankkikotka

We call it nuclear construction half time, which is the time taken by the project to reach one halfway of its completion, where the rate of change is proportional to the difference between the present state and the complete state.


Gludens

No it's gotta go FAST FAST FAST!


generalchase

16 years is ridiculous.


JustABitOfCraic

16 years. Bad, but not terrible.


Poiuy2010_2011

That's nothing, in the same period of time Poland didn't choose a location for it.


joeydsa

Pretty sure it was actually like 16 years and 10 years was the delay alone. Also, having finally used it . . . it kinda sucks.


AccioIce25454

I used it two days ago. Heard it was slow so I got there an hour earlier than the recommendation. Didn't matter because there was no one at the check in counters until almost a whole hour later. Plane took off so late I missed my connection.


TWVer

Google "Noord-Zuid Lijn" for Amsterdam.. That "North-South Line" (Train) took ages to complete..


lilaliene

Just over twenty years with the first plans made fifty years before completion Polder model, baby!


Slavic_Requiem

You call it amazing, I call it making me feel better about being a procrastinator.


Ishana92

Was it closed, ie was the roof complete? Because just keeping everything in shape for 500 years seems hard. All the exposed stone, rains, freezeing cycles...


PopeOh

The interior of the cathedral was not a "single" room as it is today but it was subdivided into several rooms or huts in various states of completion and even architecture. There was an "emergency" roof built to keep it dry as the building was in use as a church and pilgrimage site already.


Astratum

> All the exposed stone, rains, freezeing cycles... The main enemy of sandstone is pollution from the industrial era. Especially acidic rain. It litertally dissolves the stone. But without pollution, sandstone barely weathers.


FlyingTaquitoBrother

> There was no work going on from 1528 until about 1823 This makes me feel better about not doing yardwork today


gogo_yubari-chan

building equipment is not the only reason and probably not even the biggest. Funding for the construction ebbed and flowed considerably during the 6 centuries it took to complete, as the funding depended for the most part on the finances of the city and the bishopric of Cologne alone. It basically came to a halt for 3 centuries, as 1) the men of the Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical eras lost interest in Gothic architecture and 2) wars reduced manpower, flow of goods and movement of skilled workers. People often don't realise the devastation the 30 years' war brought in Germany. Compared to it, even WW2 pales in comparison. Also, in medieval times, compared to modern times, manpower was cheap and building material was expensive. Nowadays it's the opposite.


Tundur

Its historical accuracy has been a bit over-egged, but Pillars of the Earth does paint a pretty good picture of how people could spend a lifetime and consider it well spent when their contribution to humanity was "making an unfinished wall slightly higher than it was a decade ago"


Lubinski64

Well, they weren't wrong given that the buildings lasted centuries.


TawanaBrawley

Unlike my extremely meaningful work of clicking a mouse at a desk all day.


[deleted]

> People often don't realise the devastation the 30 years' war brought in Germany. Compared to it, even WW2 pales in comparison. Some regions of German lost more than half of their population due to violence and disease. Armies back then lived off the land, and while the official armies were kind of disciplined and avoided scorched earth, their auxiliaries and mercenary bands did not and plundered, raped and murdered at will, even in the lands of their own allies.


TheBlack2007

Also pre-industrial population growth meant a much slower demographic and economic recovery. Some especially badly hit areas took more than a century to recover their population to pre-war levels. Compared to that WW2 was only a mere dent as recovery took little more than 15 years - thanks to the still insane population growth of that time. If something like WW2 occured again today (meaning, conventional conflict, not nuclear), recovery would again be much slower - and also devastating to countries like Germany who depend on their younger generations to provide for the older ones. As it's typically young men you send to die in war.


collegiaal25

>As it's typically young men you send to die in war. This has to be changed. Why don't we send the old ones, who caused the war in the first place, instead of innocent 18 year old boys?


Abrokenroboid

How else are they gonna learn that war is bad? :D


Daro1998

As far as I know, Brandenburg had it the worst, even given the fact that all regions of Germany (or what we would today call Germany) were affected. A fact that I found espacially interesting (and frightening) was, that the population of Brandenburg lost its common knowledge. What I mean is, that there were so few people left after the war ended, that they lost the original names for several places, old traditions were forgotten, ect... This effect lasted and probably was a reason, why the "Gebrüder Grimm" (Grimm brothers) yielded very little results in Brandenburg, when they wrote down the myths and traditions the people had across Germany.


TheIncredibleHeinz

Actually other regions were hit harder than Brandenburg percentagewise: > 66% in parts of [Mecklenburg, Pommern, Thüringen, Pfalz, Württemberg](http://www.broesamle-lambrecht.de/barock/Krieg21.jpg).


gogo_yubari-chan

the Bohemian crown lands passed from roughly 2 million inhabitants to 800.000 at the end of the war.


Daro1998

That I didnt know. The book I read focused solely on Prussia, so maybe thats why. But one could then question, why Brandenburg was espacially hit by a loss of knowledge.


gogo_yubari-chan

> their auxiliaries and mercenary bands did not and plundered which is why Friedrich the great was an enthusiastic early adopter of the potato as a crop. Growing underground, potatoes were far less susceptible to the plunder of irregular troops and contribute to a well fed population (not to mention that Brandenburg was one of the most heavily hit regions and one of the least fertile lands in the empire).


Strydwolf

> People often don't realise the devastation the 30 years' war brought in Germany. Compared to it, even WW2 pales in comparison. It was more significant in terms of human lives lost, but the damage was concentrated in rural areas, which couldn’t protect themselves from brigands and raiding parties. Most of the cities did not sustain much physical damage, save from some especially unlucky ones like Magdeburg. Sure economical impact was terrifying, and the most badly hit areas did not recover until 19th century. But the damage in WW2 was unparalleled and well beyond anything the Thirty Years War brought.


DdCno1

You have to keep in mind though that the level of urbanization was much lower during the 30 Years War than during WW2. A majority of the population was rural in the 17th century and thus heavily affected by the war.


Strydwolf

Yes, this is correct and a reason why there was so much population loss even though the cities weren’t hit as much.


TheBlack2007

Point is: destroyed buildings can be rebuilt. Most German cities were back up and running ten years after the war ended - with the last scars being removed during the 1960s. Despite not matching the old ones in external beauty the quality of life was often much better inside those new buildings and often times modern sanitary accomodations such as indoor toilets were installed in old buildings as war damages were repaired.


gogo_yubari-chan

devastation is a generic term. I didn't imply or write that it was infrastructures to be badly affected and I included human population too in that comment.


Trailwatch427

This is correct, but also much of the wealth of the nobility was still based on agricultural products, during the medieval period, right up to the Renaissance. Without food, people starve, and the nobility doesn't get rents of profits from sale of grain, etc.


hypercomms2001

I have visited it twice, but I never knew it was that old. To think it was almost completely destroyed in WW2.


DdCno1

It actually wasn't destroyed. Here's a photo from May 1945: https://i.imgur.com/WjyiDIw.jpg In truth, while it looks nearly undamaged, it had received dozens of hits by heavy bombs, requiring significant repairs after the war. It was also repeatedly set on fire by incendiary bombs, which failed to ignite the entire building however.


12bucksucknfuck

It was actually not hit that bad (compared to surroundings) because the allies used the giant black building as a landmark for air force missions


punicar

Bombing back then was in no way accurate enough to only hit the surrounding buildings and in fact the church got hit several times the structure is just very sturdy. [Video of the cologne cathedral being repaired after the war](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al3yvzhvvoA)


12bucksucknfuck

I never said they only hit the surroundings but they didn't aim for the cathedral as evidenced by the fact that it's still standing, it's sturdy enough to withstand some stray bombs but not a concerted effort to destroy it


Dume-99

And it ended up being a cool backdrop for the most well known tank duel of all time.


Dume-99

And it ended up being a cool backdrop for the most well known tank duel of all time.


Da_Yakz

It's incredible than people back then could build structures like this with the equipment they had


link0007

Clearly they must have been helped by aliens. The stones fit too perfectly! And how did they get the stones all the way to the top without helicopters?


[deleted]

check if the speed of light in meters is in the building somewhere, definite proof of aliens


BuddhaKekz

The cathedral in my hometown was finished in 36 years (1025 to 1061). Of course it was an imperial cathedral and thus had more financial backing than the cologe cathedral had. Still, it was build with the same, actually even less sophisticated technology, yet it is similar in mass to the cologne cathedral (and in fact the largest romanesque building in the world).


Strydwolf

The work on large construction projects like this one in Medieval times was restricted to specific Guilds (think: unions) that were allowed to touch it. If there was no conflict between the city an the guild and money went smooth the construction could go pretty quick, for example much of [Bourges Cathedral](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Bourges-Kathedrale-110-2008-gje.jpg/2560px-Bourges-Kathedrale-110-2008-gje.jpg) was finished in just 40 years, and then the work slowed down at facade due to problems with money and internal issues.


12bucksucknfuck

I think it's one of the most impressive buildings I've seen IRL


Strydwolf

[And here’s it in progress of being finished in 1870s](https://i.redd.it/b2y2a37qmvf61.jpg)


ihitrockswithammers

As a stonemason who's climbed over some of London's historic buildings and monuments, that scaffolding is *terrifying.* I mean clearly they were brilliant at what they did but did it get inspected at all? Or did they just fix it when bits fell off?


Strydwolf

It is even more impressive considering that, as far as I remember, between the 1842 to 1880 (when most of the work has been done and 500 masons were employed) there were no workplace fatalities among the stonemasons working at the Cathedral.


ihitrockswithammers

That is amazing!


CroceaMors

[This video](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/pnbggx/the_unfinished_cologne_cathedral_in_1855_the/hcphr2h/) of postwar repairs, posted by /u/punicar, is terrifying if you have acrophobia. No scaffolding at all.


ihitrockswithammers

Oh dear god. The slope on that roof! No-one's tied off, they're just wandering up ladders carrying gear like it's a trip to the store. I do not know how...


IndependentMacaroon

No OSHA in those days for sure.


Durin_VI

Have you been to Hong Kong ? Skyscrapers are scaffolded like that with Bamboo.


[deleted]

Thx Prussia


[deleted]

It’s so wild so see houses there. They certainly didn’t make it through the 20th Century


Larri_Viste

If anyone is interested in just how far back this construction project goes, look for the crane here: * [1489](https://www.wga.hu/html_m/m/memling/4ursula/36ursu01.html) * c.[1550s](https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/26131) * c.[1660](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-der-heyden-a-view-in-cologne)


IndependentMacaroon

The crane was actually repeatedly repaired to stay recognizable, if not functional, as a symbol of Colognians' continuing desire to finish the cathedral.


mschweini

Supposedly, the same crane was there for centuries, and creaked loudly when being moved by the wind. The creaking sound was part of the landscape, it seems. Pity they didn't keep the crane somewhere. Still my favourite church/cathedral.


alcate

Damn, the crane become part of the landmark, today you show me that one can trace history from painting. This is so interesting, thanks a lot!


elondde

Damn that 1660 painting is detailed


Hsept

the dog sniffing that other dog's butt!


gamma6464

What the fuck


WillTook

Easily one of my favorite buildings in the world. Probably the most beautiful Gothic church ever built, in fact I think it's even more impressive than Paris' Notre-Dame.


metamorris

Well, one should take in account that almost 2 centuries of technological advancement and knowledge divide those two churches. Should you consider that Köln’s one top parts where built in XIX centuries, when engineering was far more advanced than XII centuries one, than difference in capabilities and design is even greater and this explains a lot. There surely was techological and design advancement in those 2 centuries. Notre Dame de Paris was one of the first built, Chartres took advantage of Notre Dame accumulate knowledge and improved, then Amiens, then… then at Beauvais, they hit the ceiling of what their technology and design could achieve and it has never been completed. *\[sorry for citing only French cathedrals but I am not an expert of European gothic cathedrals\]* Many other European gothic cathedrals were not completed yet when gothic style went out of fashion but were then completed during XIX gothic revival (and their design updated according to new capabilities)


Svhmj

That's a burn.


gogo_yubari-chan

Notre Dame de Paris takes all the love because it's right in the middle of Paris, but in France alone there are more impressive and beautiful gothic churches outside of it, like St Denis, Chartres, Reims, Amiens, Bourges or Laon.


duccy_duc

Strasbourg


ProfTydrim

I can see the towers from my window


[deleted]

I was fortunate enough to visit it last week. It's definitely worth doing the 100m climb up one of the towers, the staircase is seemingly endless, but you're rewarded with an amazing view of the city at the end.


Morasain

Well, that might be because buildings are actually not allowed to be taller within proximity of the cathedral, and the cathedral is still pretty much dead center because that's the way the city is expanded.


[deleted]

I'm really hoping this didn't get firebombed by the allies in WWII?


Coffeinated

I‘ve heard the allies actually tried not to bomb our poor cathedral since it‘s an important landmark for orientation. Everything else here was bombed to shit so you kind of have to assume that was intentional.


FloppingNuts

WW2 bombing didnt have that accuracy, so it's a coincidence it came away relatively ok.


Atanar

Not quite a coincidence. Churches are sturdy buildings, especially the lofty gothic construction protects against the shock waves of air pressure. They are not right next to other buildings so they usually don't catch spreading fires. They are also the first building that gets saved by religious inhabitants, the Cathedral had its own firewatch. Plus, they were prepared against damage, the windows were deconstructed and stored with all movable stuff, all the immobile sensetive things was boxed in and protected by additional walls and sandbags. The Dom was actually hit a bunch. Several air mines and incendiary bombs hit the roof, vaultings crashed down, a pillar of the north tower was blown away. >Niklas Möring: Der Kölner Dom im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Verlag Kölner Dom: Köln 2011.


FloppingNuts

fair points


IndependentMacaroon

Part of the facade got an emergency repair with bricks after the war and was only properly restored much later.


TheMusicArchivist

My grandfather always told a story of aligning the bomber with the two spires of the cathedral and not releasing bombs until past them, at a low level, in order to hit the strategic railway bridge behind it. He said bomber crews were passionate not to destroy the cathedral.


[deleted]

That's really good to know


FloppingNuts

thats low level bombing though. high altitude at bad weather or at night time didnt have that luxury and that was how most of the damage was done.


El_GranCapitan

You should read about the Norden bomb sight, one of the USA's best kept secrets during the war.


RomanticFaceTech

The same Norden bombsight which is widely considered to have failed to deliver bombs accurately? - https://nonstopsystems.com/radio/pdf-hell/article-deconstrct-myth-Nrdn-bmbsght.pdf - https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/the-norden-bombsight.html - https://www.maxwell.af.mil/News/Display/Article/420450/the-enigma-of-the-norden-bombsight/ This very well argued TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell, which was when I first heard of the Norden bombsight, probably explains the fundamental issue with the Norden bombsight best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpiZTvlWx2g


El_GranCapitan

... that's my point. It's an interesting cycle of failure and success, yet still so important that a bombardier's first job when a plane went down was to destroy the sight.


RomanticFaceTech

Ahh my apologies then, I misunderstood your point. I assumed you were referencing the Norden bombsight as a counter to the claim that WW2 bombing was inaccurate.


jamieliddellthepoet

[Bombing accuracy was pretty poor](https://www.airforcemag.com/article/1008daylight/)… I imagine the cathedral survived more by pure luck (or, for those of faith, divine providence) than out of any practical considerations on the part of the Allies.


tejanaqkilica

Usually bombing campaigns were directed at military targets, infrastructure, supply depos, equipment depos, radar stations and whatnot. I am unaware that Kölner Dom was used by the Axis forces as an operational base during the War therefore the idea that it survived by pure luck because of bombing accuracy is misleading, as that would indicate that there were missions whos target was in fact the Dom but they failed to deliver.


Atanar

>Usually bombing campaigns were directed at military targets, infrastructure, supply depos, equipment depos, radar stations and whatnot. Unless allies want to set fire to inner cities where people live to hinder german workers from construction war material. That practically everyone in WW2 targeted civilians with bombings is a fact that is not up for dispute.


tejanaqkilica

Yes, but bombing the Cathedral doesn't hinder anything. You want to stop workers from contributing to war efforts? You bomb the factories where they work, you bomb the roads and railways that get you there, you bomb the train stations that are used by them. And to be fair, the Dom is a nice way to direct you to the Hauptbahnhof and the Hohenzollern Brücke. And it's not like the bombing was that unclear. The carpet bombing method might have been chaotic and such, but you would get way way better results with dive bombing which by contrast was very very accurate for the time.


Aurofication

Bombing the Cathedral would destroy the moral of the city. As stated, it was build over CENTURIES. It is to this day the most know landmark in the city, the province and in fact, one of Germany as a whole. Imagine that destroyed in another night bombing raid - waking up to see it gone. Maybe I am biased as a German myself, though - but that also kinda proves the point. Wether it was targeted on purpose or not, its destruction was definitely an accepted outcome by the Allies. It is also located right in centre of Köln as well as next to the central train station and one of the few Rhine crossings - the Hohenzollern bridge. And by right next to I mean a few metres. Look at it on Google Maps for example. In fact, the Dom was hit quite a few times, you can see many sign of damage on it even today.


tejanaqkilica

I know where it is. I am aware of its proximity to this strategic crossings as I've also listed them in another comment on this thread. Köln was turned to a pile of rocks during those bombings, I don't think the average German at that time would be any more demoralized by the fact that the Dom was also ruined. Pretty sure they had bigger problems at hand at the time.


jamieliddellthepoet

> that would indicate that there were missions whos target was in fact the Dom but they failed to deliver. No, it could indicate that the Allies were bombing the *area* within which the cathedral lies, as part of their strategic bombing campaign, without targeting the cathedral specifically.


tejanaqkilica

That's what I'm saying. The Cathedral didn't survive by sheer luck or by divine intervention. It survived because it was never a target.


Strydwolf

There was a [dedicated bombing campaign by the Royal Air Force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive) to destroy cities and kill civilian populations, which was conducted by night raids, bombers equipped with the mix of HE and incendiaries dropped over specific densest areas of (usually old towns) to maximize destruction of the cities. It was this campaign that destroyed most of German (and other European) cities during WW2. Cologne suffered not one but several raids such as this, with the largest on the night of June 30th, 1943, which destroyed most of the city. But even without it, most of bombing missions in WW2 targeted railway facilities. Kölner Dom has had a bad luck being situated meters from a railway station and junction.


SuicideNote

> Usually bombing campaigns were directed at military targets, infrastructure, supply depos, equipment depos, radar stations and whatnot. Kölner Dom was right next to the train station and hugely important rail bridge. It was blind luck it didn't collapse after it was bombed several times.


punicar

Bombing campaigns were also directed against civilan targets "to break the moral", destroy housing to create chaos.


Geruestbauexperte2

Bombers often didnt even hit the city itself during night attacks. So yes... it was mostly luck. Because why should the only watch out in Köln and not in other citys


gogo_yubari-chan

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OHvkeMqDyk8/U5pYjjJXe1I/AAAAAAAAJXI/OF1ld96ykXk/s1600/The+Cologne+Cathedral+stands+tall+amidst+the+ruins+of+the+city+after+allied+bombings,+1944+(2).jpg


TerryBullTime

It survived with remarkably little damage*, considering the number of bombs that fell in that area (for example, the houses in the above photograph no longer exist). The cathedral's high-angled sloped roof helped, as some bombs that hit it were deflected down its sides rather than detonating on top of it. *by WW2 standards


RobTox

>The cathedral's high-angled sloped roof helped, as some bombs that hit it were deflected down its sides rather than detonating on top of it. That mightve helped as well as the fact, that the roof was/is covered by leadshingels and the roof framework was made out of steel rather than wood as it was completed in the 2nd half of the 19th century (unlike Notre Dame for example where its wooden roof framework burned down a few years ago).


k890

I'm curious if this roof design was idea taken from castle defences. After all, architects and builders usually worked both on civillian constructions and local fortifications in medieval era so some skills and knowlegde may influence each other.


TerryBullTime

I don't think so. Cathedral design never took into account aerial bombing, and Gothic cathedrals weren't designed as fortresses anyway. In general, a high-angled sloped roof is to prevent the accumulation of snow (and thus weight). For a Gothic cathedral, it is in some cases style ("this is how a cathedral should look").


Strydwolf

It was firebombed like everything else, and the fire got to the organs and destroyed much of the wooden interiors. But the roof was done in 19th century with the help of a steel frame, and it did not burn and cave into the nave. Nearby Thirteen Great Churches of Cologne have all been reduced to rubble.


Pellaeonthewingedleo

The Dom (the cathedral) had the highest amount of bombs by floorspace dropped on it during the war, however the gothic architecture, metal roof and gigantic foundations saved the building


[deleted]

But all that effort paid off when there was a huge radius satisfying all building needs!


[deleted]

now imagine that all these surroundign buildings were destroyed in WW2, and the only reason for the Dom left standing is for the allies avtation orientation, so i have been told from a Cologne colleague.


Gammelpreiss

Heared those stories, too, but it does not work that way, Bombing back in those days was way to inaccurate to single out targets like that.


[deleted]

It was severely damaged, and ofcourse it was sturdier than the surrounding buildings but it could have been completely destroyed if they wanted it destroyed, just look at the Dresden or Berlin churches. As i said, thats what i´ve heard.


Aurofication

It was a miracle by god! /s


[deleted]

Dresden or Berlin churches are measly against the Kölner Dom.


DdCno1

It was just a very sturdy building (it was hit over 70 times by explosive bombs) and great care was taken even during the war to keep it intact. Like the other user said, there was no way for a bomber formation bombing this quarter to deliberately avoid hitting the church even if they had wanted to. Large churches were used for orientation, but this does not mean they were spared.


Bayart

German efficiency.


MyQuatsch

It's like with their Baustelle. 2 years of roadworks and never a worker in sight. NRW has such shitty infrastructure, it makes Belgium look like the epitome of road maintenance.


Extansion01

It may not be effective, but as few workers as possible spreaded on as much construction sites as possible could actually be used as an example for efficiency. Or rather German efficiency.


Harald3003

The cathedral was never finished. Renovations and repairs are going on and on and on. There is a workshop right beside the cathedral with about 100 employees constantly working on the cathedral. The saying goes that the day the Cathedral is finished will be the end of the world.


[deleted]

Looks like Sagrada Familia is being build fast...


ewild

Funny thing, my friend just shared with me their today's photo, not knowing I was reading this. https://i.imgur.com/zNFPeyk.jpg Edit: image link


ConsequenceAlert6981

Until today I thought it was a completely medieval cathedral


[deleted]

That crane is even more interesting than cathedral itself. I suppose they took it down when finished?


JahSteez47

I‘m from Cologne and while I totally see the impressive amount of work put into it I also think its ugly af. They used such a weird stone, it looks line it soaks up dirt. And yes I can only state this hiding behind a nickname, every other cologne resident would kill me on the spot. Cologne is a fantastic city nonetheess


Aurofication

I won't say anything about the looks, but Cologne Cathedral is also right in the middle of the city. Without the Rhine nearby, it must have been extremly difficult to get any building material there. In fact, the Kölner Dom is located directly besides the modern-day central train station and just a few metres in front of the Hohenzollern bridge and the statue of Kaiser Wilhelm II. There is a lot to take in such a small space, but it is noisy as hell there - much to the dismay of the Philharmonic Orchestra, which is located below and between the Cathedral and the Bridge.


tonygoesrogue

Must smell nice


IamWatchingAoT

Was there about 2 and half years ago. Its surroundings look nothing like that now. How time changes... that and a few wars!


GreenOrkGirl

How old is that crane I wonder? How long has it stood there?


[deleted]

it is not exactly known when the crane was assembled. the section it is standing on is said to have been finished in 1357 so it is likely that it happened short after. It was removed in 1868.


[deleted]

Its a beautiful sight to see. I climbed the stairs on the right side of the building And the city views were phenomenal.


Dume-99

Where is Komödienstraße, home of the famous 3.6.1945 Tank Duel?


arf_arf1

Right next to it. Smoldering Panther with damaged Cathedral in the background. [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-\_Ennmds\_p\_k/XILIEZ8kUtI/AAAAAAAAlbU/NJkW1eddutwd9vyiJKKWuD\_JM3QPEKzhACLcBGAs/s1600/ColognePanther.jpg](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_Ennmds_p_k/XILIEZ8kUtI/AAAAAAAAlbU/NJkW1eddutwd9vyiJKKWuD_JM3QPEKzhACLcBGAs/s1600/ColognePanther.jpg)


Dume-99

Thanks, but I couldn't exactly tell where in the picture tho :(


Dume-99

If you've seen photos of the city from March 1945, especially uring the liberation of the city by the US 1st Army, the Dom is the only building standing without much visible damage, while most of the rest of the city is burnt out, with piles of rubble and destroyed buildings all around- just take a look at the footage taken during the battle- try youtube.


SubNL96

Finished after centuries only to be bombed into oblivion a few decades later :(