Augsburg Cathedral in the German city of Augsburg has Romanesque stained-glass windows dating from about 1065.
The cathedral’s group of early windows is widely regarded as among the oldest surviving examples of their kind. The windows include monumental figures of biblical prophets, presented in a simplified Romanesque style with strong outlines and bold areas of color.
Their survival is particularly important because very little large-scale stained glass from the 11th century remains intact. Medieval windows were vulnerable to breakage, rebuilding, weather, war, weathering, and changing architectural taste. Augsburg’s early glazing therefore provides rare evidence of how Romanesque churches used colored light before the much larger Gothic window programs of the 12th and 13th centuries.
The windows are sometimes loosely called the oldest stained glass in Europe. That wording is too broad: earlier glass fragments and smaller examples exist elsewhere. Augsburg is specifically celebrated for its remarkably early surviving group of monumental figural windows.