Photos

Cologne cathedral, officially named "Hohe Domkirche St. Petrus".
Though the two spires (157 m / 515 ft) are not the world's highest, as an ensemble they display the highest western facade of any church in the world! This makes it almost impossible do get a decent picture from the western side - you simply cannot reach the distance necessary for it, unless your focal length is much shorter than 18 mms.
I admit it's quite a conservative perspective. The main problem is that the church's sandstone is prone to disintegrate, making continuous repair necessary. It almost never happens that you can see the cathedral without any scaffolding. In this case, I had some difficulty in leaving the northern tower's scaffolding out of the frame.
The pedestrian zone surrounding the cathedral is called the Domplatte and exposed to strong winds as wind currents have to detour the huge building, reaching much higher speeds in it's vicinity.
Beware of pickpockets!