Bamberg Cathedral

Bamberg Cathedral, dedicated to Saints Peter and George, is the late Romanesque heart of the UNESCO World Heritage town of Bamberg in Upper Franconia. It was founded in 1002 by King Henry II, later Holy Roman Emperor, who made Bamberg his favourite residence and the seat of a new diocese, and was first consecrated in 1012. Two earlier cathedrals burned, in 1081 and 1185; the present building, with its four towers of about 81 m, went up under three bishops of the Andechs-Merania family and was consecrated in 1237. Because it took so long, it shows the shift from Romanesque in the eastern choir to early Gothic in the western choir and towers.

It holds several things found nowhere else. Henry II and his wife Cunigunde are the only imperial couple ever canonised, and they lie in a marble tomb carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1499 and 1513, In the west choir is the tomb of Pope Clement II, who had been bishop of Bamberg: the only papal grave in Germany and north of the Alps. And in the nave stands the Bamberg Horseman, a stone equestrian figure of around 1225–1237, probably the first equestrian statue of its kind since antiquity; nobody knows whom it portrays, though Stephen of Hungary is one candidate.

The cathedral has two choirs, one at each end, so the main entrance is in the middle of the north wall: the Princes' Portal, with a Last Judgement and figures of prophets and apostles, opened only on feast days. In the south transept stands the Nativity altar carved by Veit Stoss in 1520–23 for a Nuremberg monastery and rejected after the city turned Protestant. The austere interior is the result of a 19th-century "purification" ordered by King Ludwig I of Bavaria, which stripped out Baroque furnishings to return the church to its medieval look. In 1729–33 Balthasar Neumann added the chapter house.

The cathedral is an active church.

Getting there

The cathedral stands in the old town of Bamberg, about 1.6 km from the town centre. Bamberg station is served by Intercity-Express and Intercity trains on the line from Nuremberg. Nuremberg Airport (NUE) is about 46 km away.