Westminster Abbey western facade (front) Westminster Abbey is a large church in the Gothic style in London, England. Edward the Confessor built an abbey here in 1050 AD, in the Romanesque style. (An abbey is a place for monks or nuns to [...]
Rouen cathedral (begun 1202 AD) The people of Rouen, in northern France, decided to build themselves a new cathedral in 1200 AD, just after people started building Chartres cathedral, and only about forty years after [...]
Elevation of the nave inside Reims cathedral One difference between Chartres cathedral and Reims cathedral was that at Reims they didn't build a deep gallery over the aisle. Instead, they just put [...]
Notre Dame of Paris (1160s AD) Why did Sully build Notre Dame? It was 1160 AD, a hundred years after Matilda built the Abbaye aux Dames in Caen, and about the same time [...]
Notre Dame of Paris (1160s AD) The shape of a cross Medieval architects designed most Romanesque and Gothic churches starting with the design of a Roman basilica. But many churches added a part coming out [...]
Chartres nave Inside Chartres cathedral The architect started from the west end of the cathedral, at the nave. The builders built the nave very tall, the highest in France at that [...]
Façade of Amiens cathedral in France Why did Amiens build a big cathedral? Amiens is not far from Reims, in northern France, and when the bishop of Reims began building a big new cathedral in [...]
Nave of Abbaye aux Dames (Caen, 1050 AD) The nave is the long narrow part of a Roman basilica or a Christian church - the part where people sit in a [...]
Flying buttress (Rouen Cathedral, 1200s AD) Gothic cathedrals In the 1100s AD, architects in northern France wanted to build big impressive Gothic cathedrals. They also wanted their cathedrals to be [...]
Buttress of St. Germain des Pres (Paris, 1100s AD) A buttress holds up a wall A buttress is a big pile of stone that keeps a building's walls from falling down. [...]
