Historical Builder › Cathedrals › Strasbourg Cathedral
How Long Did It Take to Build Strasbourg Cathedral?
Short answer: about 263 years, from 1176 to 1439.
The first stone was laid in 1015 and the spire was finished in 1439, more than 420 years later.
What the sources say about the building period
First stone 1015; rebuilt after the fire of 1176; west front begun 1277; spire 1419–1439; completed 1439. City of Strasbourg Official source
Stone and crew in numbers
- Country and type
- France, cathedral
- Stone in the walls
- 55,000 to 85,000 m³ Estimate
- For comparison
- about 28 Olympic pools of stone, or 7,000 truckloads
- Average crew
- about 32 workers (model value: the crew that would need exactly this long, working without a break)
Volume basis: 112 m long; vault 32 m; tower 142 m. Checked against measurements. Our estimates come from published dimensions and are shown as a range. The result is a simple model, not a measured fact.
Where the stone came from
Pink Vosges sandstone. The oldest parts use hard, coarse Vosges sandstone, probably from the Mossig valley near Wasselonne. Later work uses finer sandstone from quarries at Wasselonne and Dinsheim, worked from the 13th century. Cathedral sandstone (Strasbourg cathedral dossier on Calaméo), Wikipedia: Strasbourg Cathedral Secondary, provisional
Plan
Legend: tradition, not evidence
Sabina von Steinbach, the daughter of master builder Erwin, carved the famous statues of the south portal.
What we know: The story arose in the 19th century from a lost inscription naming "Savinae". The Catholic Encyclopedia says it rests on a mistaken reading of a scroll.
Wikipedia: Sabina von Steinbach, Catholic Encyclopedia: Erwin of Steinbach Tradition, not evidence
Build it yourself
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