Eight hundred years after the laying of its foundation stone, today the cathedral towers above the Elbe and the city as a landmark of Magdeburg, from whose medieval tangle of houses and streets it once rose to a dizzying height, its vastness incomparable among German cathedrals. A wealth of altars, relics and sculptures, as well as the colourfulness of the walls, rib vaulting and windows, then made the cathedral seem like a reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem. Reformation, wars and restoration have stripped Magdeburg cathedral of all that colourful medievalism, but they have lent it a lonely...