St. Gereon's Basilica in Cologne began as a late antique oval building, probably built between 350 and 365, and was later converted into a church. Archbishop Hildebold added a rectangular choir around 800, and Anno II built a longer choir and crypt in 1060 to 1062. The article names no architect for any phase.
From 1219 to 1227 the oval building was encased and made decagonal, with Gothic galleries and a dome. The text calls the decagon late Romanesque-early Gothic, modeled on Aachen's Palatine Chapel. The oval measured 78 by 65 feet (23.70 by 19.80 m), and the decagonal nave is 69 by 55 feet (21.0 by 16.9 m).
Bombing in World War II left the decagon in acute danger of collapse by 1952, and structural work ran in 1968 and until 1985. Georg Meistermann and Wilhelm Buschulte made the window cycles. It became a minor basilica on June 25, 1920.
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