Cologne Cathedral Administration

The preservation of Cologne Cathedral and academic research into its architecture and interior art work are the responsibility of the Cathedral Workshop (Dombauhütte) and the Cathedral Administration (Dombauverwaltung) with their affiliated Cathedral Archives (Dombauarchiv) These organisations are directly descended from a medieval stonemasons' workshop and construction office which helped Cologne Cathedral's first architect Gerhard carry out his ambitious project back in 1248. Since January 1999, this long-established institution has been led for the first time by a woman, Prof. Barbara Schock-Werner. Many of the 90 permanent members of staff are stonemasons and sculptors (approx. 35) since the restoration of the cut stone constitutes approximately 50% of the staff's work.
Cologne Cathedral Archives today contain the entire collection of files in existence since the reestablishment of the cathedral workshop in 1823, all drawings (approx. 15,000), a collection of cathedral illustrations, a comprehensive collection of historical photographs also dating back to the year 1823, as well as almost 10,000 ectachromes, i. e. high-quality photographic shots of the cathedral architecture and its works of art produced in recent years by cathedral photographers for documentation purposes and which are available for all kinds of publication.
The Cathedral Archives are also responsible for cataloguing the cathedral's works of art and collections, and for researching art historical issues. Within the framework of the EU project DECA, many parts of the picture collections have been digitalised, recorded in a database according to all kinds of content criteria and made available to the general public via the Internet.

Contact: Dombauverwaltung, Roncalliplatz 2,
D-50667 Köln, 0049 221 17940300
info@dombauverwaltung-koeln.de and
archiv@dombauverwaltung-koeln.de
www.koelner-dom.de