Peterborough Cathedral west front - from the unique
(in England) portico style facade to the
unscreened nave and choir culminating in an
apse with a large ciborium, any (Southern) Italian
would feel at home in this magnificent old English abbey church.

Be sympathetic to the rather jarring structure in the central portico
it was built to prop up the facade, which was tipping over a bit.

The cathedral - an old monastic foundation
abbey which was promoted to cathedral status by Henry VIII
around 1540 (after he had closed the monastery)
has the best descriptive boards we have seen
anywhere in Europe relating to its own history
and the history and workings of monastic life in the middle ages.

Sadly, almost all of Peterborough's monastic buildings,
the lady chapel and most of the stained glass
windows were left in ruins by

men, during the Civil War, in the 1650s
and the materials have since been wheelbarrowed away.