The Cathedral Of Our Lady Of Strasbourg.
Look, no roads!
Cycling into Strasbourg is a very pleasant surprise. It’s a major city, home to the European Parliamant for one week a month, and France’s leading Univeristy, the École nationale d’administration. But we can cycle right into the heart of Strasbourg without meeting a road, let alone having to cycle on one.
In the centre of Strasbourg is an island in the middle of the River Ill, and on this island sits the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg. We’ll cycle right past it on Wednesday on our way to our hotel, and we’ll pay proper respect on Thursday morning.
These photographs came from the Strasbourg Tourist Office, and they’re amazing. Please, please click on them, and then click again, to see them in their full glory. 
It is enormous.
Completed in 1439, it became the tallest building in the world in 1647 when St Mary’s of Stralsund burnt down. It was the world’s tallest building for more than 200 years, and remains the tallest building built entirely in the Middle Ages.
It boasts one of the world’s largest and most spectacular astronomical clocks, but the impression you leave with is its gothic construction and the size of the thing.
And it isn’t only me that says so:
Michelin give Our Lady three stars (“*** Worth A Journey In Itself”)
Victor Hugo described it as “a gigantic and delicate marvel” and Goethe called it a “sublimely towering, wide-spreading tree of God”.
Unforgettable and spectacular.
