Gothic

Gothic churches use the pointed arch; the rib vault, a stone ceiling built on crossing arched ribs; and the flying buttress, an outside arch that carries the vault's outward push to a separate pier. Because the weight comes down at points rather than along the whole wall, walls can open into large stained-glass windows set in tracery, the patterned stone framework inside a window. Cathedral fronts typically have twin towers, three carved portals and a round rose window.

Notre-Dame de Paris, begun in 1163, was among the first buildings with flying buttresses. Chartres Cathedral, rebuilt after a fire in 1194, keeps most of its 13th-century stained glass. In the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1238-1248), the upper chapel walls are almost entirely glass. Cologne Cathedral in Germany was begun in 1248 and finished in 1880 to the medieval design. Westminster Abbey in London was rebuilt from 1245 under Henry III. Compared with Romanesque churches, the arches are pointed, walls thinner, windows larger and naves taller.

Gothic began at the Abbey of Saint-Denis north of Paris, where Abbot Suger rebuilt the west front (1135-1140) and the choir (1140-1144). The choir is widely considered the first building to combine rib vaults, pointed arches and exterior buttresses so that walls could be replaced by windows. Sens Cathedral (1135-1164) was the first cathedral built in the new style. The Île-de-France and Picardy then produced Notre-Dame, Chartres, Reims (begun 1211) and Amiens (begun 1220).

French builders developed the Rayonnant phase (about 1240-1350), with larger windows and thinner tracery, and then the Flamboyant, with flame-shaped tracery. William of Sens brought the style to Canterbury in 1174, and it spread across Catholic Europe to Cologne (1248) and Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral (begun 1344). Italian Renaissance writers named it after the Goths as an insult; Giorgio Vasari called it a barbarous German style in 1550. Gothic Revival began in 18th-century England and produced the Palace of Westminster (1840-1870), and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc restored Notre-Dame de Paris from 1844.