About Münster Cathedral

Münster Cathedral (St.-Paulus-Dom) has been the seat of the Diocese of Münster since its founding in 805, and the present building is the third cathedral on this site. Its Romanesque westwerk, with twin towers, was constructed around 1192 and incorporated directly into the later Gothic structure; the foundation stone for the third and current cathedral was laid in 1225, and the building was completed and consecrated on 30 September 1264 after nearly four decades of construction. The result is a domed basilica with double transepts in Gothic style, roughly 109 metres long with a 28.3-metre-wide nave, surrounded at the choir by a ring of chapels, its two west towers — the north 57.7 metres tall, the south 55.5 metres — each containing stacked chapels. During the radical Anabaptist takeover of Münster in 1534-1535, when Jan van Leiden and his followers sought to establish a millennialist “New Jerusalem” in the city, iconoclastic destruction swept through the cathedral, destroying numerous images and figures including the original astronomical clock of 1408. Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck besieged the city for sixteen months before retaking it in June 1535, with the Anabaptist leaders executed in 1536. Between 1540 and 1542, a new Renaissance astronomical clock was installed on the cathedral’s west wall: a 24-hour dial that runs counter-clockwise, following the sun’s apparent path, with automata figures of Death and Chronos chiming every quarter hour and the Three Magi processing around the Virgin and Child at noon. Severely damaged by WWII bombing, the cathedral was restored between 1946 and 1956.