The story
In November 1944 an air raid destroyed much of old Freiburg, yet the minster's openwork tower, 116 metres of red sandstone tracery, stayed standing above the ruins. Its medieval glass survived as well, because the windows had been taken out before the bombing. The church was begun around 1200, the tower was finished in the 14th century, and the historian Jacob Burckhardt called it the most beautiful spire on earth.
Freiburg Minster is first of all a working church, the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Freiburg since 1827. What draws art lovers inside is the high altar in the late Gothic choir. Hans Baldung, known as Grien, who had trained in Albrecht Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg, painted it between 1512 and 1516. Nearly three metres high, it shows the Coronation of the Virgin at the centre and scenes from the life of Mary on the wings. Its back, facing the ambulatory behind the choir, carries a Crucifixion.
A few steps away, in the university chapel off the choir, stands an altarpiece by Hans Holbein the Younger. In the nave, windows paid for by the town's guilds around 1320 still show their crafts, and in the bakers' window the guild's emblem is a pretzel.
