Episode Details

Beneath Cologne Cathedral lie a late antique Christian meeting house, a sixth century Merovingian church, and the Carolingian Hildebold Cathedral of 870. Everything changed in 1164, when Emperor Frederick Barbarossa took the bones of the Three Magi from Milan and gave them to Archbishop Rainald of Dassel. Housed in the golden Shrine of the Three Kings, built from 1190 to 1225, the relics drew so many pilgrims that the old church could not handle the crowds. In 1248 Master Gerhard laid out a Gothic cathedral modeled on French designs like Amiens. By around 1560 the money ran out, and for roughly 400 years a medieval wooden crane sat atop the unfinished south tower.

In the 1840s the original facade plans were rediscovered, and the Central-Dombauverein raised two thirds of the cost, with Protestant Prussia paying the rest to win over its new Catholic Rhineland subjects. Built with iron roof girders, it was finished in 1880 and was the world's tallest building at 157 meters for four years. In World War II it took 14 direct bomb hits but stood, partly because Allied pilots used its spires to navigate. Architect Willi Weyres repaired the crossing tower in 1965 in an Art Deco style critics called a wart. Today stone decays from acid rain and rusting iron dowels, and the cathedral will begin charging tourist admission in 2026 to fund upkeep.

• An American Pershing and a German Panther tank fighting at the base of the spires in March 1945
• A 2021 drone survey of over 200,000 photos producing a 25 billion polygon, 50 gigabyte 3D model
• Gerhard Richter's 2007 south transept window of 11,500 colored squares arranged by computer
• The 2024 decision to keep an antisemitic Judensau carving in the choir stalls as a teaching tool
• Andrea Buettner's winning 2025 mural of the Torah ark base from a destroyed Cologne synagogue, reused under an altarpiece