- FRANCE AND BLACK FOREST -

FREIBURG PART 1

LINKS to pages in the France and Black Forest site and to the Colin Day Travelling Days series:

     1 : Journey to Kork
     2 : Reims
     3 : Metz
     4 : Kork
     5 : Triberg

     6 : Donaueschingen
     7 : Staufen
     8 : Titisee
     9 : Freiburg
    10 : Journey from Kork

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Our coach leaves Titisee and travels though the surrounding countryside, descending via a tortuous road to Freiburg situated on the plain beside the River Rhine........

Near Himmelreich, a magnificent bronze stag stands guard on the steep wall of a gorge.

Known as the Hirschsprung (Stag's Leap), legend tells of a stag jumping across the gorge at this point to escape a huntsman.

At the centre of the old city is the Münsterplatz or Cathedral Square, Freiburg's largest square. A farmers' market is held here every day except Sundays. This is the site of Freiburg's Münster, a gothic minster cathedral constructed of red sandstone, built between 1200 and 1530 and noted for its towering spire.

The Historisches Kaufhaus, or Historical Merchants Hall, is a late Gothic building on the south side of Freiburg's Münsterplatz. Built between 1520 and 1530, it was once the centre of the financial life of the region. Its facade is decorated with statues and the coat of arms of four Habsburg emperors (left and below).

Freiburg Minster (Münster Unserer Lieben Frau) is the cathedral of Freiburg (below). 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 the foundations of an original church that had been there from the beginning of Freiburg in 1120.

In 1827 the Minster became the seat of the Catholic archbishop of Freiburg and thus a cathedral.

Freiburg Minster is unique in being the only Gothic church tower in Germany that was actually completed in the Middle Ages (1330), and it has miraculously survived intact through the ravages of the years, including the bombing raids of November 1944.

There are two important altars inside the cathedral: the high altar (left) by Hans Baldung known as Hans Baldung Grien (c. 1484 to 1545).

The other altar (below) is by Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497 to 1543) and situated in a side chapel.

In 2003, the Lenten cloth (not shown) 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.