The uppermost spire of Strasbourg Cathedral in France can be seen tilted- the result of bombardment during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. At the time it was shelled on September 15th, it held the record for world’s tallest building at 142 metres. (466 feet)

Charles David Winter, French photographer: 1821-1904

Winter also recorded, in wrenching detail, the devastating destruction of Strasbourg following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.”–Sarah Kennel in John Hannavy, ed., Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, p. 1501.

“In contrast to Germany’s triumphal framing of Strasbourg’s damaged cityscape, Charles Winter, one of France’s most eminent nineteenth-century photographers, provided an alternative Alsatian perspective on the disfigured city in his album of the Siege of Strasbourg [the present work]. The album’s photographs, silent witnesses to Strasbourg’s devastation, offered a dark premonition of the total wars to envelop Europe in the twentieth century.”–Dunlop, Cartophilia, p. 172.