Behind the Speyer Cathedral

I was very lucky that it was a very beautiful day when I visited Speyer Cathedral. The cathedral is the largest romanesque cathedral in the world and it is kept in very good condition considering that it is almost a thousand years old. The cathedral is built like a castle. It is massive and it has multiple towers. I don’t think I have seen this very often since most cathedrals that I would see would have at most two towers. I didn’t notice this when I was approaching the cathedral from the front but now that I am starting to go around the cathedral, I can see that there are more towers near the rear of the cathedral.

The apse of the cathedral can be clearly seen here and it just screams romanesque. You can see the gallery with its rounded arches which is reminiscent of structures like the Roman colosseum. The body of the apse is also adorned with larger round arches which makes for a very coherent and consistent design. Walking here behind the cathedral where there are hardly any people makes you think that you are the only person here. Indeed, it seems that Speyer itself was too small to host such a massive cathedral. This was the product of a show of power by the emperor only to underscore his power over the church as well.

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