visit to Canterbury cathedral

With school I went to Canterbury cathedral and this is my oppinion about it.

Before the visit to Canterbury cathedral:

I am going to see Canterbury cathedral. In Canterbury cathedral I am going to see stained glass windows, statues, the crypt and the nave. I think I am going to like these things, because the stained glass windows are beautiful, the statues are old and difficult to make, the crypt is really old and there are some important people buried and the nave is beautiful decorated and the ceiling is very high. The Canterbury cathedral has a very long history.  On the place were St. Augustine built his monastery the cathedral still stands today. It was the first cathedral in England. When in 1170 Thomas Becket was murdered by three knights, there suddenly came a lot of people on pilgrimages to Canterbury to see the grave of Thomas Becket. These pilgrimages have taken place for over 800 years.  Canterbury was in those times one of the most famous places to go on a pilgrimage. The cathedral has burned down a couple of times. When you go to the cathedral it is in the same way amazing for us as for people in medieval times. Almost whole the cathedral is built in gothic architecture.

After the visit to Canterbury cathedral:

The visit to Canterbury cathedral was better than I had expected it to be, because it was more beautiful and impressive than I had expected. I hadn’t expected that people in medieval times could built this beautiful and difficult things. I actually liked all parts of the cathedral, because everything is beautiful made en decorated, it is very clever of those people who have built the cathedral that they could think in this way already and it is amazing that you can built such a thing without machinery.

This is the nave of the Canterbury cathedral. The ceiling is very high what is typical for gothic architecture. In the ceiling you can see two letters. Do you know which letters? I know it, the letters are an A and X.

I think you will all know who Thomas Becket is, but if you don’t know this is a short summary about him. Thomas Becket was a friend of the king of England ( Henry ll ). The king wanted to control the church so he made Thomas Becket archbishop of Canterbury.  Thomas Becket took this really serious, so he didn’t let the king rule the church. On 29 December 1170 Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury by three knights. This is a statue about Thomas Becket. If you see the shadow behind the statue, the stripe in the middle is Thomas Becket, the two swords and the shadow of the swords make four swords, which stand for the four knights who murdered Thomas Becket.

As you can see there is a lot of stained glass window in the cathedral. Each stained glass window tells a story, mostly a story from Bible.

I like the story of Thomas Becket, who was murdered in his own Canterbury cathedral by four knights. After this happened a man would have put his sleeve in the blood of Thomas Becket and went home. When he was home he putted his cripple wife in a bath and putted his sleeve with the blood in the bath water. When the woman came out of the bath she wasn’t cripple anymore. I like these two stories in particular, because people can change just like Thomas Becket. He found his religion suddenly really important when he became archbishop. The story about the man and his cripple wife can be true, but if it really happened it is an amazing and magical event.

I definetely think you should visit Canterbury cathedral ones in your life!!