Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral is the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and one of the most historically and architecturally significant Christian buildings in the world, a cathedral of nearly two thousand years of continuous worship whose Norman and Gothic architecture, extraordinary crypt and world-famous associations with the martyrdom of Thomas Becket make it one of the essential heritage destinations in England. The cathedral has been a place of Christian worship since the mission of St Augustine in 597 and is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior figure in the Church of England and the spiritual leader of the Anglican churches worldwide.
The assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in the cathedral in December 1170, cut down by four knights of Henry II at the altar steps of the north transept in circumstances that made the archbishop immediately a martyr of international significance, transformed Canterbury into one of the greatest pilgrimage centres in medieval Christendom. The shrine of St Thomas, erected over the saint's tomb and enriched over centuries with jewels and gold offered by grateful pilgrims, became one of the most visited pilgrimage destinations in Europe, a status celebrated in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Henry VIII destroyed the shrine in 1538 and appropriated its treasures, but the pilgrimage tradition is commemorated throughout the cathedral.
The architecture of the cathedral spans nearly a thousand years of development from the Norman crypt of Archbishop Lanfranc, begun in 1070 and one of the finest Romanesque crypts in England, through the early Gothic of the Trinity Chapel and Corona where Becket's remains were translated, to the perpendicular Gothic of the fifteenth-century nave. The thirteenth-century stained glass in the Trinity Chapel windows, telling the story of miracles attributed to St Thomas, is among the finest medieval glass in existence.
Canterbury's position on the medieval Pilgrim's Way from London to the cathedral and the survival of historic buildings including the West Gate and the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey provide a setting of considerable historical depth around the cathedral itself.