St. Maria in Capitola, founded by the wife of Pepin, has the same characteristics, while St. Martin has the outline of quite the ideal Romanesque church. Its great tower, which fills the square between the apses, is certainly one of the most beautiful to be seen on a long round of European travel. This tower must date from the latter years of the twelfth century, and yet, although of a period contemporary with the Gothic of Notre Dame de Paris, it is so thoroughly Romanesque that one wonders that, in Cologne at least, the style ever died out as it did when the great Gothic cathedral was conceived.
St. Andrews is another triapsed church, and is considered one of the best and most [{271}]elaborately designed fabrics of the Romanesque type on the Rhine, particularly in respect to its central tower, the nave, and the west transept.
There has been much late Gothic rebuilding, but the chief characteristics of the earlier period distinctly predominated. The apses are polygonal, but it is thought that they may, in earlier times, have been semicircular like St. Martin's, St. Mary's, and the Apostles' Churches.
St. Gérêon's is an octagonal church similar to that of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle. Even more than the latter it has been altered, rebuilt, and added to, but the original outline is still readily traced in spite of the fact that its foundations may have come down from the fifth century. It is more difficult, however, to follow its evolution in detail than it is in the case of Charlemagne's shrine at Aix-la-Chapelle.
The style is distinctly Rhenish, though not alone in Germany do such round churches exist; one recalls the Templars' Church in London and the famous example at Ravenna in Italy.
The great decagon of St. Gérêon's is covered with a domed roof, also divided into ten sections[{272}] by groins or ribs, which rise gracefully from the slender shafts at the angles, meeting at the apex in a boss.
The ancient collegiate buildings which formerly surrounded St. Gérêon's have disappeared, but there is yet an extensive structure of a more modern date which enfolds the central pile. The easterly apse is low and rectangular, while the façade of the west is flanked by two Romanesque unspired towers.