Saint Victor's church Xanten / Germany description:The name of this Saint-Viktor church (dom) is linked to a local saint,
Victor of Xanten. Along with 360 others, he was tortured and killed in the
Amphiteater few km south-east of Xanten, after refusing to worship the Roman gods.
According to a legend, the empress Helena from Constantinopel would have built a
chapel to ouse the bons of Saint-Victor. Howoever, in 1933 under the choir a double
grave was found housing bones of men killed violently during the 4th century. It
seems more probable that there we have Saint-Victor's remains...
Probably the construction of the current church started in 1263. The
western block still makes think of the typical
Romanesque western blocks from the Rhine country, with lots of
rouded arches and saving niches. In
the middle however there is a lancet window. The
five aisled nave is Gothic, with plenty of
lancet windows, flying buttresses,
supporting buttresses carrying
pinnacles... This change in style is no wonder, the
construction took 281 years to finish in 1544.
During the second World Wars, the dom got heavily dammaged by the allied bombs.
Luckily, the people had managed to save a lot of worthy things from the church before
that, including the windows. After the war, the church was rebuilt according to the
original plans, which was finished in 1966.
In 1966 the crypt was enlarged to keep the urns with ashes of
victims from the concentration camps and to bury Catholic heroes that had stood up
against the National Socialism.
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