About 1140, Abbot Suger rebuilt the east end of the abbey church of Saint-Denis, near Paris, with a ring of chapels whose walls were mostly glass. Suger wrote that the light through colored glass lifted the mind toward God. Within a century, cathedrals all over northern France were going up in the new style, later called Gothic.
Gothic builders combined three tools, none new on its own:
- Pointed arches, which push less sideways than round ones and can be made taller or shorter for the same width.
- Ribbed vaults, a skeleton of stone ribs that carries the weight of the vault to a few points.
- Flying buttresses, arms of stone outside the building that reach over the aisles to brace the high walls against the vault's outward push.
Key idea
Why it works
Looking closely: Notre-Dame de Paris. The west front is a great square divided in three: three pointed doorways at the bottom, a row of carved kings, a rose window at the center flanked by tall pointed windows, a light open gallery, and two square towers. Everything is balanced and firmly organized, yet the surfaces are opened up by arches and tracery. Along the sides, flying buttresses reach out like oars. A fire in 2019 destroyed the roof and spire; the cathedral was restored and reopened in December 2024.
At Chartres, a fire in 1194 destroyed most of the earlier church, but its west front survived, with its tall, slender column figures of kings and queens of the Bible. The new cathedral rose behind it, mostly between 1194 and 1220, and it still has most of its medieval stained glass.
Worked example: Romanesque or Gothic?
- Pointed arches, rib vaults and flying buttresses are the Gothic trio.
- The ribs bring the weight down to piers; the flying buttresses brace against the outward push.
- So the walls between the piers carry little load and can be glass.
Answer: Gothic; the frame of piers and buttresses carries the load.
Common mistake