Dom

This grand cathedral is Magdeburg's main historical landmark and traces its roots to 937 when Otto I (912-73) founded a Benedictine monastery and had it built up into a full-fledged cathedral within two decades. Alas, fire destroyed the original a couple of centuries later. But by then the Gothic style was all the rage, which is why its successor is a three-aisled basilica with transept, choir and pointed windows. The burial place of Otto I and his English wife Editha, it's packed with artistic highlights ranging from the delicate 13th-century Magdeburg Virgins sculptures to a haunting antiwar memorial by Ernst Barlach. The church also has impressive eco-credentials: in 1990 it became the first one in eastern Germany to get its own solar roof.