St. Paul’s Cathedral is near and dear to my heart, ranking second only to Notre-Dame de Paris herself. I originally built a Minecraft replica of St. Paul’s Cathedral back in 2012 that was about 1.3:1 scale, at the time discovering how much more detail I could include if I untethered myself from strict 1:1 building. I slowly iterated upon that 1.3:1 build over the years, but in 2024 I finally decided that I wanted to scale it back down to 1:1 as much as possible so it appears in scale alongside all my other 1:1 builds. The result is my final model of St. Paul’s here that I am especially proud of, which is only about 10–15% larger than the real building—a tolerance I settle for with most of my 1:1 replicas.

Unlike my previous builds, I made the active choice to use the debug stick. While I prefer for my builds to be Survival-friendly—albeit with a custom texture pack—I ultimately decided to use the debug stick largely to configure the columns of the Western Facade. These columns are tricky to get right since they are arranged in pairs with a thin gap between. Most conventional block arrangements like just using 1x1 configurations appear dull. I considered using textured trapdoors to thicken the columns, but this does not work with only a 1x1 gap since you cannot place two trapdoors in one space. The solution I settled for was using 2x2 wall blocks to create columns that are only 1.6x1.6 blocks wide. But placing 2x2 wall blocks side-by-side for the twin columns unfortunately makes them connect together in the middle. So the only solution was to make use of a debug stick. So I figured if I permit myself to use the debug stick for this build I might as well go all out, so I made use of the debug stick for many other small details, pushing the model to its limit.

I am certain some fellow lovers of St. Paul’s will be quick to point out my major departure from the real cathedral: my inner dome is coffered like the Pantheon rather than textured like the mural that exists today in the real building. From what I have read about Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s, he was said to have been disappointed with the inner dome mural, wanting either mosaics or possibly, by some accounts, coffering. I too tend to prefer coffering, so to honor Wren and also please myself, I chose to incorporate coffers in my dome. I likely will release an alternative texture-scheme for the dome mural, but that will wait for now.

While I have been recently experimenting with a greater variety of color palettes for different Minecraft builds, I chose to stick with the tried and true grey stone palette for this build. The mostly milky-white color of Portland Limestone used in St. Paul’s Cathedral is close enough to this palette, and I prefer the great diversity of blocks that work well with it. The bottom half of the elevation for St. Paul’s sometimes appears slightly darker, due primarily to greater exposure to pollution over the centuries. I considered trying to weather my build more with some darker tones for the lower half, but for now I have chosen to present it as pristine which is largely accurate to its present-day state having recently undergone extensive cleaning.