Know what it was like in Cologne? Freezing cold, that's what. It was somewhere below freezing with a strong wind and therefore a significant windchill. Anyway we arrived around 3pm and immediately got ourselves to the famous Dom to get a pic of it before the sun set:
It's black for several reasons. #1 because the train tracks used to be right next to the cathedral and all of the black smoke from the engines discolored the building and #2 because people used to heat their homes with coal and that smoke also discolored the building. I think it makes it look neat but since people no longer heat with coal and the trains no longer run right next to the cathedral the stonework will slowly be replaced with new clean stones and the blackness will be gone.
The inside of the Dom is enormous (obviously not as big area-wise as Saint Peter's but definitely close and it might be taller on the inside but it probably just looked that way due to the architecture or something like that that I don't understand):
Inside the Dom, you could see your breath. It was the coldest church I've ever been in and I have no idea how anybody could sit through a mass in it.
There are beautiful windows of stained glass, more than I've seen in any other church I think:
I really liked the bigger scenes, this one's a little blurry but you get the idea:
Then they let a modern stained glass artist do one of the big windows and this is what he did (I think it's great because it's fun and it's totally different from all the religious scenes you always see in stained glass):
The floors were made up of intricate mosaics:
And look at all the prayers being sent to the Virgin Mary! I've never seen such a large area filled with candles in a church before.
And of course all the dead archbishops of Cologne are buried in the Dom so you can see their tombs as well.
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