Style
Gothic
Height and light: pointed arches, rib vaults and flying buttresses let the walls become frames for great windows of tracery and coloured glass.
- When
- mid-1100s to 1500s
- Where
- Europe (it began in the region around Paris)
- Tell it apart
- Gothic Revival (from about 1830) copies these forms; real medieval Gothic is hand-cut, often irregular and altered over centuries. In the Americas a Gothic-looking building is almost always a revival; the rare exceptions are early Spanish colonial churches with late-Gothic rib vaults, such as the 1500s cathedral in Santo Domingo.
The tells
- Pointed arches throughout
- Rib vaults overhead
- Flying buttresses and pinnacles outside
- Large windows with tracery; rose windows
- Carved portals, crockets and gargoyles
Features of this style
- West front
- Narthex
- Nave
- Aisle
- Transept
- Crossing
- Chancel
- Choir
- Apse
- Ambulatory
- Radiating chapel
- Crypt
- Cloister
- Tower
- Spire
- Belfry
- Louvre
- Portal
- Tympanum
- Archivolt
- Gable
- Buttress
- Flying buttress
- Pinnacle
- Battlement
- Arcade
- Pointed arch
- Four-centred arch
- Ogee arch
- Lancet window
- Rose window
- Tracery
- Mullion
- Stained glass
- Clerestory
- Triforium
- Pier
- Timber roof over a vault
- Rib vault
- Fan vault
- Hammerbeam roof
- Gargoyle
- Crocket
- Finial
- Corbel