Qualla: Finials of Cologne Cathedral

Finials of Cologne Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cherubino, CC BY-SA 3.0. The crosses you see at the top of Cologne Cathedral's twin spires are not crosses at all. They are Kreuzblumen - finials, stone flowers, eight metres tall and 4.58 metres across at their lower leaf wreath. They sit at 149 and 157 metres above the cathedral square, almost half a kilometre above sea level once you factor in the pavement, and they are made of Obernkirchen sandstone from a quarry near Minden. Each finial is built from 24 individual stones, fitted together because no nineteenth-century freight lift could carry a one-piece leaf wreath weighing 17 tonnes to the top of the world's tallest church. Look up at the cathedral and you almost certainly do not see them as objects. They appear, from the square below, as decorative pinheads. They are, in fact, building-sized.

Image: Cherubino | CC BY-SA 3.0

Finials of Cologne Cathedral: Master Builder's Compromise

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathe Roni, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cathedral had been under construction for 632 years when, in 1880, the spires were finally crowned. The plans for the finials traced back to Ernst Friedrich Zwirner, the master builder who had revived work on Cologne Cathedral in the mid-nineteenth century. Zwirner died in 18...

Image: Mathe Roni | CC BY-SA 3.0

Finials of Cologne Cathedral: Getting Them Up There

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit VollwertBIT, CC BY-SA 2.5. Moving thirty-seven cubic metres of carved sandstone to a height of 150 metres in 1880 was not a problem with an obvious solution. Scaffolding swayed. Rope hoists strained. The steam-powered freight lift on the cathedral building site could lift four tonnes at most. So the masons...

Image: VollwertBIT | CC BY-SA 2.5

Finials of Cologne Cathedral: The Workers in the Wooden Boxes

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anselm Schmitz, Public domain. The north finial was set on 23 July 1880. The south finial followed on 14 August. The keystone of the south spire - the symbolic completion of the entire cathedral - was placed during the formal ceremony on 15 October. And then the citizens of Cologne complained that the finials ...

Image: Anselm Schmitz | Public domain

Finials of Cologne Cathedral: The Finial on the Square

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you stand on the Domplatte, the cathedral plaza, and look toward the west façade, you will see a third finial at ground level. It is a concrete copy of the originals at full size, installed on 11 October 1991 by the Cologne Tourist Office, replacing an earlier model that had b...

Image: Dietmar Rabich | CC BY-SA 4.0