Great St. Martin Church

Great St. Martin Church holds the skyline of the Cologne old town with its massive, square central tower and four smaller corner turrets. It sits on the foundations of a Roman warehouse that once lined the Rhine bank. In nineteen forty-two, bombing raids left only the outer walls and the tower standing. Instead of tearing down the ruins, the city spent decades carefully reconstructing the Romanesque interior, using old photographs and surviving architectural fragments to piece the structure back together stone by stone.