St. Ignatius Cathedral in Shanghai

Brief Information

What matters about this cathedral is not only its church function, but also the abrupt changes in its use. The building, constructed by French Jesuits in 1905–1910 as a Neo-Gothic Catholic church, became the cathedral of the Shanghai Diocese in 1950. Then, in 1966, it lost the parts through which church architecture is easiest to read: its spires, ceiling, and stained glass windows.

The most unexpected turn was the church’s ten years of use as a grain warehouse. This fact changes how the building is viewed: it should be perceived not as an intact monument that has come down to us without ruptures, but as a cathedral whose restored appearance is tied to a period of loss. Later the church was reopened, the spires were restored, and the stained glass windows began gradually returning in 2002.

What to Notice First

It makes sense to look at the cathedral through three elements that are explicitly mentioned in the history of its damage and restoration. The spires are important as part of the Neo-Gothic silhouette: they were torn down during the Cultural Revolution and then restored in the early 1980s. The stained glass windows show a different pace in the return of the church’s appearance: they were smashed, and their gradual restoration began only in 2002. The ceiling is worth keeping in mind as a less conspicuous but important part of the loss: the source reports that it was dismantled.

These details are linked by one principle: here, the architecture is read not only through style, but also through which parts had to be brought back after a non-sacred period. In this context, Neo-Gothic does not look like a finished decoration, but like a set of specific elements without which the cathedral temporarily ceased to be perceived as the church it once was.