Ely Cathedral The relief scenes were built into the wall, so each face or statue was individually hacked off, but leaving many finely carved details, and numerous puzzles as to what the original scenes showed. After the reformation it was redeployed as the Parish Church (Holy Trinity) for the town, a situation which continued up to 1938. The central octagonal tower, with its vast internal open space and its pinnacles and lantern above, forms the most distinctive and celebrated feature of the cathedral. However, what Pevsner describes as Ely's 'greatest individual achievement of architectural genius' came about through a disaster at the
Strasbourg Cathedral is now the premier landmark of Alsace. One can see 30 kilometers from the observation level, which provides a view of the Rhine banks from the Vosges all the way to the Black Forest. The octagonal tower as it can be seen is the combined work of architects Ulrich Ensingen (shaft) and Johannes Hültz of Cologne (top). Ensingen worked on the cathedral from 1399 to 1419, and Hültz from 1419 to 1439. In 1505, architect Jakob von Landshut and sculptor Hans von Aachen finished rebuilding the Saint-Lawrence portal (Portail Saint-Laurent) outside the northern transept in a markedly post-Gothic, early-Renaissance style.