WESTERN EUROPE is not short of spectacular medieval cathedrals and Durham stands comparison with the best. Whether glimpsed from the window when whizzing by on a train or inspected from the city’s many viewing points, its situation on a steep-banked sandstone bluff, the great towers looming above a woody bend of the River Wear, is unforgettable. It is also a significant building in the story of architecture, one of the finest Romanesque churches in Europe and unanimously recognised as a pioneering building in that tradition.
The cathedral is founded, quite literally, upon the corpse of Cuthbert (634–687), one
