Cathedrals

Though I don’t consider myself a religious person, I love visiting cathedrals. I love admiring the architecture and the religious imagery displayed both inside and out. I find it interesting to see how different the imagery is from one cathedral to the next. I also enjoy hearing bits of history surrounding the cathedral. I didn’t always have such an interest in cathedrals.

The first cathedral I really remember visiting was St. Paul’s Cathedral in London when I was thirteen. I was there with my parents and my sister and we took a tour with a much older woman. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much, if anything, that she told us. I do remember her asking all the kids on the tour questions about what she had just told us; at the end of the tour, she told us we could take the stairs to the dome, but she would not be joining us there. I remember that on the way down, my sister counted the steps. I wish I still remembered how many we had to climb.

St. Paul’s is a beautiful cathedral, and I wish that I could recall more information from the tour than I do. The one piece of information that has stuck with me concerns the statue of Queen Anne (who reigned as Queen Regent of Great Britain from 1702-1714) that is located outside the cathedral. The statue of the monarch typically faces the church or cathedral, but in the case of Queen Anne, her back is facing the church. If I remember correctly, Anne insisted it be this way because she felt the church had turned its back on her. And as I typed this out, I remembered one other tidbit of information concerning cathedrals: only cities have cathedrals. Towns and villages have churches but not cathedrals.

The next cathedral I remember visiting is Notre Dame de Paris in 2005. I was on holiday with my mother in Paris. We really didn’t have a lot of plans of where we were going to go. We walked around, and if the place looked interesting, we checked it out, which is how we discovered des Églises where Napoleon is buried. Notre Dame seemed to be much smaller than I remember St. Paul’s. It is still an amazing building. If there were tours offered, my mother and I, we didn’t take one. But it was nice seeing the building at our own pace. I remember climbing up to get a closer look at the bells and the grotesques that decorated the building.

Seeing the cathedral was one of the highlights of my trip to Paris. I love visiting France; I’ve been there three times, and I want to go back, mainly to see Notre Dame again. With my second visit, I planned on doing something I didn’t do the first time: climb to the top of the bell towers. I hadn’t made it to the top because halfway up, my mother had to turn around, because her legs just didn’t want to make the climb. I was a little too worried about her to take too much time away.

And I remember being horrified when it hit the news that the building had caught on fire. Not too long ago, I was spending time on YouTube, and one of the videos recommended to me was a video of Notre Dame on the upper level near the bell towers and the bells were ringing that had been posted a few days before the fire. I love bells. I have an extensive collection of collector bells, and I very much enjoyed listening to the bells ringing for the entire ten minutes of the video. I hope to return someday, even if I get there before the cathedral is fully restored.

The third cathedral I remember visiting is the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. It is the largest of the three I’ve talked about. I had taken a river cruise through Europe with my mother and Cologne was one of the ports we visited. Seeing the cathedral was part of the city tour. What stuck out to me about the cathedral was the length of time it took to build it. Construction began on the cathedral in the middle of the thirteenth century and it was not complete until the 1880s. There were lengthy periods where no construction was done, sometimes as long as two hundred years.

During World War II, there was some damage done to the cathedral during the Allied bombing. Part of that stems from it being a good landmark. There is a rumor I heard during the tour concerning an unwritten agreement between the Allies and the Axis powers: if the Allies wouldn’t bomb the Cologne Cathedral, the Nazis would not bomb St. Paul’s. I don’t know if that is a true story but I found it extremely interesting.

The Cathedral in Cologne was not the only one I got to see while on this trip to Europe. The river cruise ended in Budapest; guests on the cruise could extend there stay in the Hungarian capital if they wanted to, and thankfully my mother and I did. While there, we got to see St. Stephen’s Cathedral, which houses the relics of St. Stephen.

Like with Notre Dame, we didn’t take an actual tour of cathedral. Instead, we roamed around the interior and went to see the relics. As we were getting ready to leave, I noticed that you could pay to go up to the dome. My mother declined to go, as she didn’t think she’d be able to walk up all those steps to the top, but she was more than happy to let me go. It was a long climb up to the top, and there is a balcony around the dome itself. I went outside and saw some great views of Budapest. On my way back down, I learned there was an elevator that I could have taken part way up. My legs would have really appreciated knowing that before I started the climb. My mother might have been able to come along had we known.

On my bucket list is a visit to England to see a different cathedral: the one in Leicester. Why on earth would I want to go there? Not too long before the pandemic hit, I was (again) on YouTube where I was recommended a video about finding the remains of King Richard III (who reigned from 1483-1485) underneath a parking lot in Leicester. His remains are now buried in the cathedral. I have watched so many videos about the discovery and read a few books on the king. I now want to see it in person. I’ve watched so many videos and read so many books, I could probably give a tour without too many notes.

By seeing cathedrals, I not only get to see how architecture varies from one place to another, but I get to learn something about the history of the place I’m visiting.