Cathedral Hit By Raf is Rebuilt

It was regarded as the finest baroque building north of the Alps. But on the night of February 13 1945, the RAF reduced Dresden's 18th-century cathedral to rubble in an air raid that killed at least 35,000 people. For the next 45 years, Dresden residents knew the church as a huge mound of rubble flanked by two jagged walls. It was only with the fall of the Berlin Wall that locals began a campaign to get it reconstructed culminating, after a decade of building, in a ceremony yesterday to mark its reopening.

"The church is to Dresden what St Paul's is to London," said Dr Paul Oestreicher, a canon emeritus of Coventry Cathedral and a founder of the Dresden Trust. "This is true both architecturally and psychologically."

Tens of thousands of Dresdeners packed the square in front of the Frauenkirche - or Church of Our Lady - to celebrate its rededication. Inside, the Lutheran bishop, Jochen Bohl, described the decision to rebuild the cathedral as a powerful "work of reconciliation". Some 1,800 guests including the Duke of Kent, Germany's president, Horst Köhler, and the current and future chancellors, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, attended the service. Millions watched on TV.

At a time when Germany seemed gripped by cultural pessimism, the rebuilt cathedral was a symbol of optimism, Mr Köhler said. He added: "What has been achieved in Dresden can give the whole of Germany hope." He paid tribute to the thousands of donors - many of them British - who contributed €100m (£68m) of the almost €180m cost of rebuilding. Their generosity recalled that of the "18th-century visionaries" who paid for its original construction by introducing, among other things, a tax on beer, Mr Köhler said.

Close up, the building looks magnificent - restoring Dresden's skyline, framed by the shimmering Elbe river, to its early rococo splendour.