Speyer Cathedral

Speyer Cathedral

The Speyer Cathedral is a world cultural heritage site and a much-visited place in Germany. It bears the official name Domkirche St. Maria and St. Stephan. It is almost a thousand years old and today the towering building of the city. With it the Salian Emperor Konrad II (around 990 to 1039) set God and himself a monument - he wanted to build the largest church of his epoch and wanted it to be an expression of the power of the Salians. The exact year of the start of construction is not known - but probably in the 1020s. Since 1981 the cathedral is part of the UNESCO world cultural heritage,

The oldest part of the cathedral is the crypt, which was consecrated around 1043. This lower church extends under the entire cho

View of the east facade

Source: Wikipedia.org, Roman Eisele – Own work CC BY-SA 4.0

ir and transept. Four parts of the room form a large hall crypt, which is one of the largest and most beautiful of its kind. It is the burial place for many Salian kings and emperors. The Speyer Cathedral is closely linked to the medieval empire of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation - like the cathedrals of Mainz and Worms, it is therefore one of the so-called imperial cathedrals on the Rhine. All three cathedrals are strongly influenced by the Romanesque architectural style.

The city fire of 1689 destroyed large parts of the nave, which was rebuilt in its original form in the eighteenth century. On behalf of the Bavarian King Ludwig I, the interior was painted in the nineteenth century in the Nazarene style. This style is a romantic-religious art movement founded by German artists at the beginning of the 19th century. Today's viewers find it very kitschy.