Cologne Cathedral

The best weather of our entire trip came on our day in Cologne. Mostly sunny morning skies provided beautiful light in which to visit and shoot the Cologne Cathedral, another UNESCO World Heritage site that dates back to 1248 and is the country's most visited landmark.

It's hard to get my brain around something that is nearly a thousand years old and still in active use. That sense of history was a recurring theme throughout our trip.

Construction of this Gothic masterpiece took place in several stages over seven centuries and wasn't completed until 1880.

I was fortunate to get an unobstructed shot of the ornate western door.

Our guide pointed out the crest of Cologne on one of the stained glass windows.

An abstract pattern of 11,500 squares of glass in 72 colors fill a 20-meter-high window designed by Gerhard Richter.  The "pixelated" window, as my kids called it, was installed in 2007 to replace a plain glass window that had itself replaced the original window that had been destroyed in World War II.

The light shining through the new window creates interesting patterns on some of the interior statuary.

The most celebrated work of art in the cathedral is the Shrine of the Three Kings, created in 1190 and traditionally believed to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men, whose relics were acquired by Frederick Barbarossa at the conquest of Milan in 1164.

Visitors get the opportunity to climb the 533 steps to the top of the cathedral's south tower, where a look up reveals some of the incredible attention to detail that was paid even to places that the craftspeople had to believe nobody would ever see up close.

The exterior platform is enclosed in wire mesh for safety.  I had to stick my camera lens right up to the fencing to get a shot without any of the actual wire in it.  Still not a bad effort; it's amazing how a gorgeous view and fantastic light can do that. :)

Cologne was probably my favorite stop of our trip, and our time at the cathedral was a big reason why.