Under love's heavy burden i do sink.

Stained agate church windows

Whether inclined to the mystical or not, thousands of rockhounds have made the pilgrimage to the Romanesque Grossmunster Cathedral in Zurich. The core of the building is Carolingian, supposedly founded by the man himself in the 900’s, though the outer surface we see today was built between 1100 and 1220. It was a monastery church in the middle ages, but the Swiss Reformation was launched from here by Huldrych Zwingli in 1520, still seen as a pivotal moment in Swiss history. Since then, in accordance with Protestant tradition the inside of the church has been kept plain and unadorned, free of the ‘fripperies of popery’ (remember in those austere days, Calvin banned music and dancing in Geneva, on pain of death).