Basilica of St. Severin

This guide to the Basilica of St. Severin in Cologne begins in 1999, when conservators opening a scuffed wooden casket sealed since the tenth century, to dry it out after a rain leak, found something no one expected inside. It traces the silk and linen fragments they uncovered, some woven as early as the fourth century, and the third-century bishop Severin whose grave first drew a chapel to this Roman burial ground. You'll also hear how the site grew, over centuries, into one of twelve great Romanesque churches that once made Cologne a rival to Paris.