Strasbourg: Dance 'til you Die
Strasbourg, Alsace
December 15, 2021
On the evening before we went to Strasbourg, Ellie shared the story of the Dancing Plague of 1518, when a strange kind of madness gripped the inhabitants of that city, compelling them to dance madly for hours and days and weeks, with some eventually collapsing and dying in the streets.
We tried a bit, but never quite caught the vibe.
But we enjoyed seeing Strasbourg's massive cathedral, interesting in many ways and not least because although it was the tallest manmade structure in the world for about 200 years, it wasn't the tallest when it was completed in 1439. It took a fire in the bell tower of St Mary's church in Straslund in 1647 to hand the crown to Strasbourg's cathedral, which held it until the completion of a taller church in Hamburg.
In addition to the marvelous astronimical clock which still chimes every 15 minutes, one of the most interesting sights inside was the statue of a rival architect, forced to look on for all eternity at a column he predicted could not hold. (We imagined the confusion of the bishop when presented with the plan: "You want to spend money on what?")
