Cathedral Steeples #2of4

Lübeck, Germany, is proud of her skyline of pointy church spires — the Marienkirche, the Dom, Jackobkirche (St. James), Petrikirche (St. Peters), and one for St. Aegidien. These steeples were destroyed in WWII bombings, and great effort was devoted to restoring to Lübeck, its famous skyline.

As we looked over the city of Prague we could see dozens of towers and spires of all sizes and shapes. While the St. Vitas Cathedral has more or less “normal” Gothic steeples, in the Old Town Square, the Tyn Cathedral has the unique Prague tower, a steep roof, with small pinnacles and spires at the top.

St. Petri Cathedral, the Dom in Bremen, Germany, has four arches at ground level, a Rosette (round) window in the center, between two very high steeples, one of which, the south tower, is available to climb. And near the entrance to the choir, a long forgotten stonemason carved the “Bremen Church Mouse.”

At Nördlingen, Germany, we climbed the 350 steps to the top of the Flamboyant steeple of the St. Georgs Kirche, from where we could look over the nearly perfect circle town, enclosed by a two and a quarter mile Stadtmauer (town wall).

As we drove north from Zagreb, Yugoslavia, we passed a very small church in a very small town. It appears they wanted, but could not afford, a larger church, so this tiny church is placed high on a man-made mound of dirt so the steeple sticks above other buildings nearby. We also remember the very tall steeples on the large church, in nearby Maribor.

Spires atop the twin flamboyant towers of St. Peter’s Cathedral (built in the 1200s), present a lacy picture as downtown Regensburg, Germany, is approached. Crossing the Donau (Danube) River on the Steinerne Brücke (the old stone bridge), permits a beautiful view of the cathedral, its spires, and the substantial buildings of this town.

In Argenton, France, the little church high on a hill overlooking the city, has a huge gilded statue of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus, at the very tip of the steeple. As an indication of its size, inside the tiny church there were just 6 chairs on each side of a narrow middle aisle. That statue wouldn’t fit through the door of the church. A small statue of Good Lady of Argenton, inside the church, is said to have protected the town from the plague in 1632.