Building the Dom

A hundred and twelve metres, and it was meant to be more.

They started on the church in the middle of the thirteenth century, to replace an older building on the same ground. The tower came later and was to reach a hundred and twenty-six metres, until it turned out the soil could not carry that. It ended lower, and is still the tallest church tower in the country.

After that the work slowed down. The choir was finished around 1410, the transept only seventy years later, the nave another forty years after that. And that nave was never vaulted.

Martin Luther is the reason. His criticism brought the trade in indulgences down, and with that trade went the money they had meant to finish the church with. The flying buttresses that should have braced the nave were never built.

Three hundred years of building, and the most important part stood there unsupported.

We walk under the tower to the far side of the square, to number 29.