West choir, altar

The west choir of the Naumburg Cathedral is the most important architectural creation of the early Gothic period in Central Germany. At the same time, the Naumburg master succeeded in completing the new cathedral building with the west choir in the short time of perhaps only seven years to 1249. The sacred room, which has its own altar place and was built of local Freyburg shell limestone, measures 25 by 15 metres. The load of the high rising ribbed vault is transferred to the outside by six buttresses, where they run out in pinnacles, from which impressive gargoyles in the form of nuns, lions, deer, dogs, bulls and monks emerge, which are still in use today. The vault of the quadrum is crowned by a richly ornamented ring at the end, a so-called “celestial hole”, which was at the centre of the staging of sacred games.