St. Paul’s Cathedral, London

St. Paul's Cathedral stands on a site of Christian worship since 604 AD, though the current building dates from 1675-1710. Christopher Wren designed it after the Great Fire of London destroyed the medieval cathedral. The building has witnessed the full sweep of English history, from the Reformation through the Blitz, serving as both parish church of the nation and daily place of worship.

In 604 AD, as Christianity spread through Anglo-Saxon England, Bishop Mellitus established a cathedral church dedicated to Paul the Apostle on Ludgate Hill. This first wooden structure was replaced by stone, which burned in 1087. The Normans rebuilt in grander form, creating a medieval cathedral with one of Europe's tallest spires. Fire struck again in 1561, destroying that spire. The structure limped along, increasingly decrepit, until the Great Fire of 1666 made rebuilding inevitable.

Christopher Wren, already England's most celebrated architect, received the commission in 1669. His first designs, featuring a Greek cross plan with massive dome, were rejected as too radical. The final design, the building that stands today, represents compromise with church authorities who wanted traditional English Gothic. Yet Wren's genius transformed constraint into achievement. The dome, the first of its kind in England, became the defining image of London. Construction took thirty-five years. Wren was 78 when the cathedral was declared complete on Christmas Day 1711.

Elizabethan antiquarian William Camden once proposed that a Roman Temple of Diana had occupied the site before the first Christian church. Wren himself investigated during construction and found no evidence. Modern archaeology confirms what Wren suspected: the temple theory is legend, not history. But the choice of this hilltop, the City's highest point, suggests that sanctity accrues to certain locations, perhaps regardless of the specific tradition that names them sacred.