Winchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity and of Saint Peter and Saint Paul and of Saint Swithun in Winchester, is the cathedral of the city of Winchester, England, and is among the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The cathedral is the seat of the bishop of Winchester and is the mother church for the ancient Diocese of Winchester. It is run by a dean and chapter, under the dean of Winchester.
The cathedral as it stands today was built from 1079 to 1532 and is dedicated to numerous saints, most notably Swithun. It has a very long and very wide nave in the Perpendicular Gothic style, an Early English retrochoir, and Norman transepts and tower. With an overall length of 558 feet (170Â m), it is the longest medieval cathedral in the world. With an area of 53,480 square feet (4,968Â m), it is also the sixth-largest cathedral by area in the UK, surpassed only by Liverpool, St Paul's, York, Westminster (RC) and Lincoln.