August 14, 1880: Construction on Cologne Cathedral is completed.
The cathedral was first consecrated in the year 70 A.D. It was destroyed to make way for a new and more magnificent structure in 1248, by which time it was already called “the mother and master of all churches in Germany” - though apparently still not fit to house the recently-acquired “Shrine of the Three Kings”, an a reliquary said to contain the bones of the Biblical Magi. Construction on the new cathedral was inconsistent in the following centuries, but in the 1800s (as German Romanticism and enthusiasm for medieval styles bloomed), work resumed on the building.
632 years after the Archbishop of Cologne laid the foundation stone of the Cologne Cathedral, construction finally ended. A celebration was held in honor of this event, attended by Kaiser Wilhelm himself. In 1996, it was added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites as ”an exceptional work of human creative genius”.