Cologne Cathedral, Cologne · Travel Poster

Not just a view, the heritage behind it. Ella writes about the place, its hidden history, and the details that never make it into the guidebooks, all printed on the poster.

They laid the foundation stone in 1248, and then they simply stopped. By the 1500s the money and the will had run out, leaving a half built cathedral with a finished choir and, on the south tower, a giant wooden crane. That crane sat up there, unused, for roughly three hundred years. It became such a fixed part of the skyline that the people of Cologne grew rather fond of it, and a superstition took hold that the city would only endure for as long as the cathedral stayed unfinished, so perhaps it was safer left that way. Then in the 1800s something remarkable turned up: the original medieval parchment plans for the west facade, lost for centuries, were rediscovered in scraps. Armed with the ancient drawings, builders finished the cathedral exactly as its first architects had intended, and in 1880, some 632 years after that first stone, it was done at last. For a while it was the tallest building in the world.

An original illustration, available in colour or black and white, created for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.

Please note that, to protect the original artwork from copyright infringement, the images shown on this website are low resolution. The poster you receive is printed in high resolution, with all the detail and clarity of the original.