welcome

welcome to our Gothic world!

This site is dealt with the information of the several representative features in Gothic style.

Have you already known about history of Gothic Architecture? If you don't, click here !!

This site contains these below.

1. Bar Tracery

-- It is composed of thin stone elements rather than thick ones as in plate tracery. The glass rather than the stone dominates when bar tracery is used. It gives a more delicate, web-like effect. The term refers especially to the subdivisions in the arched openings of Gothic architecture. In Romanesque design the enclosing of twin openings within a single arch created a wall space above them, where a circular or quatrefoil opening was pierced as an ornament. Simply to understand, it looks like this below.

2. Flying Buttress

-- A buttress is a support -- usually brick or stone -- built against a wall to support or reinforce it. A flying buttress is a free-standing buttress attached to the main structure by an arch or a half-arch.

3. Stained Glass

-- translucent colored glass used to compose designs in windows. The technique is similar to mosaic, the pieces of glass being held in strips of cast lead and mounted in a metal framework.

-- Stained-glass making was at its height during the 1300's-1400's. The glass was made from river sand, beech wood, and potash. Colors were made by adding metal oxides that were fused to the mixture. The pieces were assembled like a large puzzle and held together by lead. The architecture allowed for the stained glass. Before buttressing was invented walls were thick and bulky with no space for glass.

Stained glass window
in Notre Dame in Paris, France

4. Ribbed Vaulting

-- Stone or brick vaulting typically used for roofing and comprising a thin, light layer supported by a framework of arched ribs.

-- Romanesque churches relied on barrel vaulting. Gothic builders introduced the dramatic technique of ribbed vaulting. While barrel vaulting carried weight on continuous solid walls, ribbed vaulting used columns to support the weight. The ribs also delineated the vaults and gave a sense of unity to the structure.

ribbed vaulting above the nave Prague Castle,1485

5. Pointed Arches

-- Arches are generally of two types, rounded at the crown, and pointed at the crown. Especially, pointed arch bridges are mainly medieval. They are found in the architecture of many cultures, particularly in buildings with a religious purpose. The shells of Sydney opera house are modern versions of the same idea.

-- The robust nature of masonry arches is well illustrated by the longevity of the many ruins in Britain, many dating from the dissolution of the monasteries, which was begun in 1538 by Henry VIII.


La Sainte Chapelle, Paris		Sevilla, Sevilla