Henry the Lion rebuilds Braunschweig

1164

The Welf duke of Saxony, cousin of Barbarossa and master of much of northern Germany, set up a stone lion outside his castle at Braunschweig as a symbol of his power. He rebuilt the cathedral, organized trade fairs, and helped make Lubeck a Baltic port. The bronze lion, one of the earliest large-scale secular sculptures of the Middle Ages, still stands in the castle square as a monument to Welf ambition.