I love Gothic cathedrals, but I love modern art and architecture just as much, and the two don’t often meet well. Coventry is the exception. It’s the best example I’ve seen of modern ecclesiastical architecture done properly, and I visited in July 2026 to see it for myself. I hope you enjoy the virtual tour.
Coventry Cathedral is not one building, but two, standing at right angles to each other, the old and the new.
I started in the ruins of the destroyed old cathedral, kept in remembrance.
On the night of 14 November 1940, the Luftwaffe flew an operation they had code-named Moonlight Sonata. 515 bombers came over Coventry and stayed for more than eleven hours, dropping high explosives, incendiaries and parachute mines. 568 people were killed. 4,300 homes were destroyed. The medieval cathedral of St Michael’s burned.
Shortly afterwards, the cathedral’s stonemason, Jock Forbes, noticed that two charred roof timbers had fallen across each other in the shape of a cross. He stood them up in the wreckage on an altar built of rubble. On the sanctuary wall behind, two words were carved.
Father Forgive.