Here is a nice view of Ulm from 1572, in which you can see its most outstanding feature, the Ulmer Münster! This is a church that has the highest steeple in the world, measuring 161 m. You can climb to the top, which I did; well, almost the top. The stairs reach 143 m in 768 steps. And it takes about 20 minutes, unless you're very fit, but still you have to contend with people coming down. The first two thirds are "one way" stairs, so you can effectively go as fast as you wish.
However, the top third is a single stairwell climbing up the center of the the spire. As you can see from the photo below, there is a nice superstructure for the spire, with a column in the center, and a spiral staircase in the center of the column. There's not much room to pass, and some young children were a little frightened. And everyone had to take it slow.
Most of the city center was bombed by the RAF in 1944, but amazingly the Münster was essentially untouched. This was fortunate, because it's construction began in 1377, so it is a "cathedral" with much history. It wasn't completed until 1890 (talk about patience), and it also isn't technically a cathedral, since Ulm went Protestant in 1530 (it's now a Lutheran church).
When I got up to the top, the view, of course, was great. The red roofs of the city buildings spread out along the Donau were quite the sight.
In the photo on the left, from lower down (far below the top) you can clearly see the flying buttresses, as in Notre Dame. In the photo on the right, from the top, you can see the entire church, with the two steeples toward the east. I need to learn my cathedral architecture: chapel, nave, altar, etc. Here's one place to learn it.
Finally, the inside was incredibly large, and no pictures would do it justice. They did have beautiful stained glass windows, and I tried to give a feeling for them below. There were several along the sides of the church.
