Freiburg Minster

Freiburg Minster is the cathedral of Freiburg. The last duke of Zähringen started the building around 1200 in Romanesque style and the construction continued in 1230 in Gothic style. The minster was partly built on the foundations of an original church that had been there from the beginning of Freiburg in 1120.

In the Middle Ages, Freiburg lay in the Diocese of Konstanz. In 1827 the Freiburg Minster became the seat of the newly erected Catholic Archdiocese of Freiburg and thus a cathedral. The cathedral has the only Gothic church tower in Germany that was completed in the Middle Ages (1330), and miraculously, has lasted until the present, surviving the bombing raids of November 1944, which destroyed all of the houses on the west and north side of the market. The tower was subject to severe vibration at the time, and its survival of these vibrations is attributed to its lead anchors, which connect the sections of the spire. The windows had been taken out of the spire at the time by church staff led by Monsignor Max Fauler, and so these also suffered no damage.

There are two important altars inside the cathedral: the high altar of Hans Baldung, and another altar of Hans Holbein the Younger in a side chapel. The nave windows were donated by the guilds, and the symbols of the guilds are featured on them. The deep red color in some of the windows is not the result of a dye, but instead the result of a suspension of solid gold nanoparticles.

Address
Münsterplatz 1B, Freiburg, Germany

Established
13th century