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22-440: Designed by Magnus Isæus the building was built in 1882–1891, and features a spire -like roof, which is a well-known silhouette on the skyline of central Stockholm. The Vasabron Bridge passes in front of the building and Gamla Riksarkivet ("Old National Archive") lies south of it. 59°19′34.06″N 18°3′47.41″E  /  59.3261278°N 18.0631694°E  / 59.3261278; 18.0631694 This article about

44-572: A spirelet or spike on the rooftop of a building. In particular, the spirelets often built atop the crossings of major churches in mediaeval French Gothic architecture are called flèches. On the ridge of the roof on top of the crossing (the intersection of the nave and the transepts ) of a church, flèches were typically light, delicate, timber-framed constructions with a metallic sheath of lead or copper. They are often richly decorated with architectural and sculptural embellishments: tracery , crockets , and miniature buttresses serve to adorn

66-509: A Swedish building or structure is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples . A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan , with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are typically made of stonework or brickwork , or else of timber structures with metal cladding , ceramic tiling , roof shingles , or slates on

88-448: A fully exposed structure of arches not unlike the arches of a medieval European crown . The spire itself is supported by buttress structures. A needle-spire is a particularly tall and narrow spire emerging from a tower surrounded by a parapet . In general, the term applies to considerably larger and more refined spires than the name Hertfordshire spike. A Hertfordshire spike is a type of short spire, needle-spire, or flèche ringed with

110-626: A parapet and found on church-towers in the British Isles . The roofs of splay-foot spires open out and flatten off at their base, creating eaves above the tower supporting the spire. A flèche ( French : flèche , lit.   'arrow' ) is a name given to spires in Gothic architecture : in French the word is applied to any spire, but in English it has the technical meaning of

132-460: A spear point, the power and strength of religion. Freiburg Minster Freiburg Minster ( German : Freiburger Münster or Münster Unserer Lieben Frau ) is the cathedral of Freiburg im Breisgau , southwest Germany . The last duke of Zähringen had started the building around 1200 in romanesque style. The construction continued in 1230 in Gothic style. The minster was partly built on

154-518: A suspension of solid gold nanoparticles . In 2003, the Lenten cloth was restored and backed with a supporting material. It now weighs over a ton, and so must be carried from the workshop with heavy machinery for its use during Lent . The cathedral holds 19 bells, altogether 25 tonnes, making it one of the largest peals in Germany. From the time of its construction, the cathedral was not owned by

176-440: The bombing raids of November 1944, which destroyed all of the houses on the west and north side of the market. The tower was subject to severe vibration at the time, and its survival of these vibrations is attributed to its lead anchors, which connect the sections of the spire. The windows had been taken out of the spire at the time by church staff led by Monsignor Max Fauler, and so these also suffered no damage. Freiburg Minster

198-431: The 2019 Notre-Dame de Paris fire . It will be rebuilt in the same form. A pinnacle is a miniature spire that was used both as a decorative and functional element. In early Gothic, as at Notre-Dame de Paris, stone pinnacles were placed atop flying buttresses , to give them additional weight and stability, and to counterbalance the outward thrust from the rib vaults of the nave. As an ornament, they were used to break up

220-699: The Roman Catholic Church but by the people of Freiburg. In the Middle Ages, the situation changed so that the building was self-owned, and administered by a guardian appointed by the people of the city. More recently, the Münsterbauverein association was created, which now legally owns the cathedral. For the conservation of the cathedral, the Freiburger Münsterbauverein ("Freiburg Minster-Upkeep Association")

242-418: The architect Christopher Wren designed reinforcing beams which halted the deformation of the structure. Openwork spires were a notable architectural innovation, beginning with the spire at Freiburg Minster , in which the pierced stonework was held together by iron cramps. The openwork spire, represented a radical but logical extension of the Gothic tendency toward a skeletal structure. Crown spires have

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264-522: The cathedral: the high altar of Hans Baldung , and another altar of Hans Holbein the Younger in a side chapel. See also: Freiburg Altarpiece The inner portal contains sculptures of the Ten Virgins . The nave windows were donated by the guilds , and the symbols of the guilds are featured on them. The deep red color in some of the windows is not the result of a dye, but instead the result of

286-474: The exterior. Since towers supporting spires are usually square, square-plan spires emerge directly from the tower's walls, but octagonal spires are either built above a pyramidal transition section called a broach at the spire's base, or else free spaces around the tower's summit for decorative elements like pinnacles . The former solution is known as a broach spire . Small or short spires are known as spikes , spirelets , or flèches . This sense of

308-596: The flèche. The most famous flèche was the Neo-Gothic 19th-century design by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc for the Notre-Dame de Paris , 100 feet (30 meters) tall and richly decorated with sculpture. The original flèche of Notre-Dame was built in the 13th century, and removed in 1786, shortly before the French Revolution . The famous replacement by Viollet-le-Duc with an abundance of sculpture was destroyed in

330-510: The foundations of an original church that had been there from the beginning of Freiburg, in 1120. In the Middle Ages, Freiburg lay in the Diocese of Konstanz . In 1827, Freiburg Minster became the seat of the newly established Catholic Archdiocese of Freiburg , and thus a cathedral. The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt once said that the church's 116-meter tower will forever remain the most beautiful spire on earth . His remark gave rise to

352-409: The frequently heard misquote of the most beautiful tower in the whole of Christianity . The tower is nearly square at the base, and at its centre is the dodecagonal star gallery. Above this gallery, the tower is octagonal and tapered, and above this, is the spire. It is the only Gothic church tower in Germany that was completed in the Middle Ages (1330), and has lasted until the present, surviving

374-441: The horizontal lines, such as parapets and the roofs of towers. In later Gothic, they were sometimes often clustered together into forests of vertical ornament. In Gothic architecture , where the spire is most commonly used, and particularly in Gothic cathedrals and churches it symbolised the heavenly aspirations of churches' builders, as well as offering a visual spectacle of extreme height. It also suggested, by its similarity to

396-418: The sides, at an angle to the faces of the tower, as at St Columba, Cologne . In the 12th and 13th centuries, more ornament was added to the faces of the spires, particularly gabled dormers over the centres of the faces of the towers, as in the southwest tower of Chartres Cathedral . Additional vertical ornament, in the form of slender pinnacles in pyramid shapes, were often placed around the spires, to express

418-532: The transition between the square base and the octagonal spire. The spires of the late 13th century achieved great height; one example was Fribourg Cathedral in Switzerland, where the gabled lantern and spire reached a height of 385 feet (117 meters). In England, a tall needle spire was sometimes constructed at the edge of tower, with pinnacles at the other corners. The western spires of Lichfield Cathedral are an example. Spires were particularly fragile in

440-418: The wind, and a number of English Gothic spires collapsed; notably that of Malmesbury Abbey (1180–1500); Lincoln Cathedral (which had been the tallest in the world) 1349–1549; and Chichester Cathedral (1402–1861). The spire of Salisbury Cathedral , completed in 1320 and 404 feet (123 meters) tall, without the tower, required the addition of buttresses, arches and tie irons to keep it intact. Finally, in 1668

462-735: The word spire is attested in English since the 1590s, spir having been used in Middle Low German since the 14th century, a form related to the Old English word spir , meaning a sprout, shoot, or stalk of grass. The Gothic church spire originated in the 12th century as a simple, four-sided pyramidal structure on top of a church tower. The spire could be constructed of masonry, as at Salisbury Cathedral , or of wood covered with lead, as at Notre-Dame de Paris . Gradually, spires became taller, slimmer, and more complex in form. Triangular sections of masonry, called broaches were added to

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484-479: Was not the seat of a bishop until 1827, long after it was built. The tower has 16 bells, the oldest being the "Hosanna" bell from 1258, which weighs 3,290 kilograms. This bell can be heard on Thursday evening after the Angelus , on Friday at 11:00 am (a time consequently known as "Spätzleglocke"), on Saturday evenings, and each year on 27 November in remembrance of the air raid. There are two important altars inside

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