Ulm Minster in southern Germany is often mistaken for a cathedral, but it was built by the town’s own citizens. In the 14th century Ulm’s parish church stood outside the city walls, exposed during a siege tied to Emperor Charles IV, and was controlled by the Reichenau monastery under an arrangement dating to Charlemagne in 813. The roughly 10,000 people of Ulm decided to fund a new church inside the walls themselves. Mayor Ludwig Krafft laid the foundation stone on June 30, 1377, and Heinrich Parler designed a hall church, with the town’s women working on the foundations. In 1392 Ulrich Ensingen, previously associated with Strasbourg Cathedral, changed the plan to carry a 150 meter spire, forcing a much taller nave.

After Matthias Böblinger took charge in 1477, heavy aisle vaults pushed outward until the building threatened to collapse. Burkhard Engelberg of Augsburg reinforced the west tower and replaced the vaults with ones half as wide on new rows of columns. Ulm voted to turn Protestant in 1530 and 1531, and in 1543 work stopped with the tower at about 100 meters, as ocean trade routes opened by Columbus, the Portuguese, and Magellan drained the landlocked city’s overland trade. Work resumed in 1844 with flying buttresses, and the steeple was completed on May 31, 1890 at 161.53 meters, briefly the tallest building in the world.

• The north wall of the nave still bulges outward by 27 centimeters from the near collapse
• A December 17, 1944 air raid destroyed about 80 percent of the medieval center, and a 500 kilogram bomb that hit the choir on March 1, 1945 failed to explode
• Mozart played the main organ in 1763
• In 1877 Ulm’s Jewish congregation, including Hermann Einstein, funded a statue of the prophet Jeremiah below the organ
• After more than 130 years as the world’s tallest church, it was surpassed by the Sagrada Familia on October 30, 2025