Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 3: St. Kilian’s Cathedral
In the Bavarian city of Würzburg, after visiting the Marienkapelle (part 1) and Neumünster (part 2), my husband Eric and I stepped over to the adjacent St. Kilian’s Cathedral, also referred to simply as Würzburg Cathedral (or Würzburger Dom in German). Its namesake, Kilian, was a seventh-century Irish missionary bishop to the Germanic tribes of Franconia who was beheaded by Duchess Geilana after he denounced her marriage to Duke Gozbert, her late husband’s brother. The present cathedral, with its Romanesque cruciform layout, was built starting in 1042 and was consecrated in 1187. It underwent subsequent remodels (late Gothic, then Baroque) and then a major reconstruction following the collapse of its nave in a 1945 air raid, reopening in 1967. The following is by no means a comprehensive accounting of the art inside, but rather a selection of works that stood out to me. You may notice…
