Durham & The Angel of the North

Durham Cathedral: One of the World's Great Buildings

Durham Cathedral was begun in 1093 by Bishop William of St Carilef on the instructions of William Rufus, and substantially completed by 1133 — making it one of the finest and most complete examples of Romanesque architecture anywhere in the world. The Nave, with its massive cylindrical piers incised with geometric patterns, its dramatic pointed arches (among the earliest in England) and its magnificent rib-vaulted ceiling, creates an overwhelming impression of power and permanence quite unlike any other building in England.

The Cathedral is the resting place of two of the most important figures in Northumbrian Christianity: St Cuthbert, whose shrine behind the High Altar was the destination of medieval pilgrims from across northern Europe, and the Venerable Bede, the 8th-century monk and scholar from Jarrow whose Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum is the primary source for the history of early Christian England. The Galilee Chapel at the west end of the Cathedral, where Bede's tomb rests, is one of the most beautiful and intimate spaces in English architecture.

The Angel of the North: Britain's Most Discussed Artwork

When Antony Gormley's Angel of the North was unveiled in February 1998, it divided opinion dramatically — local tabloids ran "Angel is an ugly monster" headlines while the Guardian called it "a masterpiece". Within a decade the controversy had evaporated and the Angel had become one of the most beloved and most photographed public artworks in Britain. Standing on a hilltop above the former Team Colliery, the Angel was deliberately sited to mark the centuries of coal and shipbuilding industry that defined this region — its wings spread the full width of a Boeing 767 fuselage, its body modelled on Gormley's own, its material chosen to weather to the same reddish-brown as the Tyneside earth around it.