Magdeburg’s main historical landmark traces its roots to 937 when Otto I founded a Benedictine monastery and built it into a fully fledged cathedral within two decades. After a fire destroyed the original a couple of centuries later, it was rebuilt as a Gothic three-aisled basilica with transept, choir and pointed windows. Today it’s the burial place of Otto I and his English wife Editha, packed with artistic highlights ranging from the delicate 13th-century Magdeburg Virgins sculptures to a haunting antiwar memorial by Ernst Barlach.
