A place travelers can visit Great Minster

Reviews: Great Minster

General description: Great Minster

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Description
Zurich's best known landmark dominates the Upper Limmat area with its mighty double tower façade. According to legend, Charlemagne endowed the first church here where the city's patron saints, Felix and Regula are said to have come after they were beheaded on the Limmat. A stone monument to the founder stands in a niche in the south tower. At the time of the Reformation the church was where Zwingli was at work, which also explains the scant decoration inside. The earliest parts date back to the late 11th century and display Romanesque features, such as the purely Romanesque crypt or the wonderful cloister. The Grossmünster (great minster) monastery was the only one of seven within the then city walls which did not fall victim to Reformation zeal, and became a College of Theology. The towers reveal the long construction time needed to complete this sacred building, with the styles changing from the bottom to the top: Romanesque as far as the roof ridge, Gothic up to the gallery, completed with high pointed caps at the insistence of the then mayor Hans Waldmann, and then replaced with Neo-Gothic hoods after a fire in the tower and extensive debate at the end of the 18th century, and described by the writer Victor Hugo as "ugly peppermills". Visitors are allowed to ascend the towers.
The double-towered church is the city's emblem. It was here that the reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, set the wheels of the church revolution turning.
The towers can be climbed.

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