St. Paul's Cathedral
Wren's domed English Baroque cathedral on Ludgate Hill, seat of the Bishop of London.
Last updated
via Wikipedia: St Paul's Cathedral · see source
Where it is
Coordinates: 51°30′50″N 0°05′53″W (51.5140, -0.0980) · Open in OpenStreetMap
Coordinates and connected clubs: the infobox of Wikipedia: St Paul's Cathedral (CC BY-SA 4.0). Map: drawn by Codexery from OpenStreetMap tiles.
St Paul's Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of St Paul, is the Anglican cathedral of London and the seat of the Bishop of London. It is the mother church of the Diocese of London and stands on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London.
The present building, finished in 1710, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in the English Baroque style after the Great Fire of London and is Grade I listed. Its great dome has shaped the London skyline for more than 300 years; at 365 ft it made the cathedral the city's tallest building from 1710 to 1963. It remains a working church with daily services.
Lore & Background
The dedication to Paul the Apostle goes back to the first church on the site, founded in AD 604, when Æthelberht, king of Kent, built a church for Mellitus, newly consecrated bishop of the East Saxons. That church's fate is unknown after the East Saxons briefly turned back to paganism. Later bishops such as Erkenwald were buried there, and King Æthelred the Unready was laid to rest in the cathedral in 1016.
After a fire in 1087 the Normans began the building known as Old St Paul's, consecrated in 1240. Its style shifted from Romanesque to Gothic during construction, and its wooden vault left it vulnerable. The English Reformation stripped its shrines and relics, and the Great Fire largely destroyed it.
Did You Know?
- The nearest Underground station, St Paul's, is 130 yards from the cathedral.
- Excavations in 1878 showed Old St Paul's was 585 ft long, with a spire about 489 ft high.
- William Camden claimed a temple to Diana once stood on the site, but Wren found no trace of it.
- The pre-Reformation relic collection reportedly included the skull of Thomas Becket.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: St Paul's Cathedral (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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