Cathedral of St Peter, Bautzen, Gothic cathedral in Bautzen, Germany
The Cathedral of St Peter is a Gothic hall church on the Fleischmarkt in Bautzen's Old Town, built of pale stone with a steep dark tiled roof, tall pointed-arch windows with tracery, and stone buttresses. Its 83-metre tower carries a slender dark spire; a green oxidized copper roof adjoins the main body. The interior has a pronounced bend in its axis and an asymmetrical layout, as a second tower was evidently planned but never built.
A first church stood here around 1000; the collegiate foundation of St. Peter was established around 1217/18, and the choir was consecrated on 24 June 1221. The present hall church took its form in 1430, and a fourth southern nave was added in 1456/63. After the 1634 city fire the interior was redone in Baroque style, and the tower received its Baroque hood in 1664.
Since 1524 Catholics and Lutherans have shared the cathedral, making it Germany's first simultaneum church. The 1543 contract between the city council and the cathedral chapter assigned the choir to Catholic worship and the nave to Protestant worship, with the boundary at the Lettnergitter, a screen that still marks the division today.
The cathedral stands on the Fleischmarkt in the Old Town, opposite the town hall. The 83 m tower opens as a viewing platform on some weekends; 238 steps lead to the viewing floor above the Türmerstube at about 53 m, the highest point in the city open to the public. An outside lift on the tower is used by the tower keeper to haul up purchases.
The tower has an external lift that the tower keeper uses to haul up groceries, and a keeper still lived in the tower as of 2014. The 83 m tower opens on some weekends; 238 steps lead to a viewing floor about 53 m up, the highest point in the city open to the public.
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