Like the cathedrals at Mayence and Bonn, that at Worms offers the peculiarity of a double apside. The eastern termination is demi-round in the interior and square outside, while the westerly apse is polygonal both inside and out.
The cathedral was the only structure of note left standing in the city after the memorable siege of 1689.
The outline of this cathedral is most involved, with its high, narrow transepts, its two choirs crowned with cupolas and flanked with four lance-like towers. It is a suggestion, in[{151}] a small way, of the more grandiose cathedral at Mayence, but it is by no means so picturesquely situated.
The portal of the façade shows some fine sculptures of the fourteenth century. One figure has given rise to much comment on the part of antiquaries and archeologists who have viewed it. It is a female figure mounted on a strange quadruped of most singular form, and like no manner of beast that ever walked the earth in the flesh.
It has been thought to be a symbolical allusion to the Queen Brunhilda, and again of the Church triumphant. It may be the former, but hardly the latter, at least such symbolism is not to be seen elsewhere.
The interior is of no special architectural value, if we except the contrast of the ogival vaulting with the Romanesque treatment otherwise to be observed.
There are numerous tombs and monuments, the chief being of three princesses of Burgundy who are buried here.
The church of St. Martin dates from the twelfth century, and Notre Dame from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are in every way quite as interesting as the cathedral, though their walls and vaults have been[{152}] built up anew since the sacking of the city by the French in the seventeenth century.
The synagogue, recently restored, dates, as to its foundation, from the eleventh century, and is one of the most ancient in all Germany.
According to tradition, a Jewish colony was established at Worms 550 years B.C. This may or may not be well authenticated,—the writer does not know,—but no city in Germany in the middle ages had a colony of Jews more numerous, more venerated, or more ancient.