Colleta di Castelbianco, Italy Medieval European houses Houses in the Middle Ages were different from Roman houses in several ways. One important change was that more people lived in small villages for [...]
Laon Cathedral, France(begun 1160 AD) Where is Laon? In 1100 AD, Laon was a very rich town in northern France, with strong walls and a lot of farmland. It's on top of a [...]
Medieval European houses Half-timbered houses in Toulouse, France In the Middle Ages, many people in northern Europe (northern France, Germany, and England) built their houses in this half-timbered way. This was [...]
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (500s AD) Rioters burned the old churches The Roman emperor Constantius II built a big church next to the imperial palace in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the 300s AD. [...]
Gothic cathedral: Nave of Rouen cathedral (1200s AD) Northern France gets rich enough to build cathedrals In the late 1100s and early 1200s AD, the kings of France, Philip and his son Louis, [...]
The Duomo in Florence (cathedral) Why did Florence want a new cathedral? The Republic of Florence started to plan this cathedral in the late 1200s AD, when Dante was growing up, to replace the old cathedral from [...]
Florence baptistery: the Romanesque baptistery in Florence, Italy Earlier Florence baptistery (700 AD) Probably people had built an earlier, smaller octagonal baptistery here around 700 AD. This is where Catholic priests baptized Christian [...]
Early Gothic architecture: Notre Dame of Paris (1160s AD) What came after Romanesque? After the Romanesque period in architecture, around 1100 AD, architects in western Europe gradually started to build Christian churches and palaces in [...]
Can you match each of these stained-glass windows from the Sainte Chapelle to the Bible story it illustrates? Noah's Ark Moses and the Burning Bush Marking the doors for Passover Parting the [...]
Conciergerie: the king's castle in Paris (parts of it from the 1300 AD) What is the Conciergerie? The Conciergerie was the castle where the kings and queens of France lived when they [...]
