Peterborough Cathedral

Peterborough Cathedral, properly the Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew, and formerly known as Peterborough Abbey or St Peter's Abbey, is a cathedral in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in the United Kingdom. The seat of the Anglican Bishop of Peterborough, it is dedicated to the Apostles Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint Andrew, whose statues look down from the three high gables of the West Front. Founded in the Anglo-Saxon period as a minster it became one of England's most important Benedictine abbeys, becoming a cathedral only in 1542. Its architecture is mainly Norman, following a rebuilding in the 12th century. Alongside the cathedrals of Durham and Ely, it is one of the most important 12th-century buildings in England to have remained largely intact, despite extensions and restoration, and is one of the nation's best preserved pre-Reformation abbeys. Peterborough Cathedral is known for its imposing Early English Gothic West Front (façade) which, with its three enormous arches, is without architectural precedent and with no direct successor. The appearance is slightly asymmetrical, as one of the two towers that rise from behind the façade was never completed (the tower on the right as one faces the building), but this is only visible from a distance.