Medieval architecture

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Bodiam Castle, England, fourteenth century. Medieval architecture is a term used to represent various forms of architecture common in Medieval Europe.

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[edit] Characteristics

Cloisters of Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy, France.

[edit] Religious architecture

The Latin cross plan, common in medieval ecclesiastical architecture, takes the Roman basilica as its primary model with subsequent developments. It consists of a nave, transepts, and the altar stands at the east end (see Cathedral diagram). Also, cathedrals influenced or commissioned by Justinian employed the Byzantine style of domes and a Greek cross (resembling a plus sign), with the altar located in the sanctuary on the east side of the church. Further information: Cistercian architecture

[edit] Military architecture

Main articles: castle and tower house

Surviving examples of medieval secular architecture mainly served for defense. Castles and fortified walls provide the most notable remaining non-religious examples of medieval architecture. Windows gained a cross-shape for more than decorative purposes: they provided a perfect fit for a crossbowman to safely shoot at invaders from inside. Crenellated walls (battlements) provided shelters for archers on the roofs to hide behind when not shooting invaders.

Embrasure Merlon Half-timbered construction Jettying, in which the faces of upper floors project beyond lower ones

[edit] Civil architecture

Donington le Heath Manor House Museum, Leicestershire is a surviving example of a Medieval Manor House dating back to 1280. It is now open to the public as a museum.

[edit] In Western Europe

[edit] Pre-Romanesque

Early medieval secular architecture in pre-romanesque Spain: the palace of Santa Mara del Naranco, c.850. Main article: Pre-Romanesque art and architecture See also: First Romanesque Western European architecture in the Early Middle Ages may be divided into Early Christian and Pre-Romanesque, including Merovingian, Carolingian, Ottonian, and Asturian. While these terms are problematic, they nonetheless serve adequately as entries into the era. Considerations that enter into histories of each period include Trachtenberg's "historicising" and "modernising" elements, Italian versus northern, Spanish, and Byzantine elements, and especially the religious and political maneuverings between kings, popes, and various ecclesiastic officials.

[edit] Romanesque
Main article: Romanesque architecture

Romanesque, prevalent in medieval Europe during the 11th and 12th centuries, was the first panEuropean style since Roman Imperial Architecture and examples are found in every part of the continent. The term was not contemporary with the art it describes, but rather, is an invention of modern scholarship based on its similarity to Roman Architecture in forms and materials. Romanesque is characterized by a use of round or slightly pointed arches, barrel vaults, and cruciform piers supporting vaults.

[edit] Gothic
Main article: Gothic architecture The various elements of Gothic architecture emerged in a number of 11th and 12th century building projects, particularly in the le de France area, but were first combined to form what we would now recognise as a distinctively Gothic style at the 12th century abbey church of SaintDenis in Saint-Denis, near Paris. Verticality is emphasized in Gothic architecture, which features almost skeletal stone structures with great expanses of glass, pared-down wall surfaces supported by external flying buttresses, pointed arches using the ogive shape, ribbed stone vaults, clustered columns, pinnacles and sharply pointed spires. Windows contain beautiful stained glass, showing stories from the Bible and from lives of saints. Such advances in design allowed cathedrals to rise taller than ever, and it became something of an inter-regional contest to build a church as

high as possible. Variati Brick Gothic

ons included

Transept
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Cathedral ground plan. The shaded area is the transept; darker shading represents the crossing.

South transept at Kilcooly Abbey, County Tipperary, Ireland

For the periodical go to The Transept. A transept (with 2 semitransepts) is a transverse section, of any building, which lies across the main body of the building.[1] In Christian churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building in Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture. Each half of a transept is known as a semitransept.[1] The transept of a church separates the nave from the sanctuary, whether apse, choir, chevet, presbytery or chancel. The transepts cross the nave at the crossing, which belongs equally to the

main nave axis and to the transept. Upon its four piers, the crossing may support a spire, a central tower (see Gloucester Cathedral) or a crossing dome. Since the altar is usually located at the east end of a church, a transept extends to the north and south. The north and south end walls often hold decorated windows of stained glass, such as rose windows, in stone tracery. Occasionally, the basilicas and the church and cathedral planning that descended from them were built without transepts; sometimes the transepts were reduced to matched chapels. More often, the transepts extended well beyond the sides of the rest of the building, forming the shape of a cross. This design is called a "Latin cross" ground plan, and these extensions are known as the arms of the transept.[1] A "Greek cross" ground plan, with all four extensions the same length, produces a central-plan structure. When churches have only one transept, as at Pershore Abbey, there is generally a historical disaster, fire, war or funding problem, to explain the anomaly. At Beauvais only the chevet and transepts stand; the nave of the cathedral was never completed after a collapse of the daring high vaulting in 1284. At St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague, only the choir and part of a southern transept were completed until a renewed building campaign in the 19th century.

[edit] Other senses of the word

The word "transept" is occasionally extended to mean any subsidiary corridor crossing a larger main corridor, such as the cross-halls or "transepts" of The Crystal Palace, London, of glass and iron that was built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. In a metro station or similar construction, a transept is a space over the platforms and tracks of a station with side platforms, containing the bridge between the platforms. Placing the bridge in a transept rather than an enclosed tunnel allows passengers to see the platforms, creating a less cramped feeling and making orientation easier.

Nave
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Schematical illustration of a plan view of a cathedral, with the colored area showing the nave

Not to be confused with Knave (disambiguation).

Romanesque nave of the abbey church of Saint-Georges-de-Boscherville, Normandy, France has a triforium passage above the aisle vaulting

Late Gothic Fan vaulting (1608, restored 1860s) over the nave at Bath Abbey, Bath, England Suppression of the triforium offers a great expanse of clerestory windows.

In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" (Medieval Latin navis, "ship") was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting.[1] The nave of a church, whether Romanesque, Gothic or Classical, extends from the entry which may have a separate vestibule, the narthex to the chancel and is flanked by lower aisles[2] separated from the nave

by an arcade. If the aisles are high and of a width comparable to the central nave, the structure is sometimes said to have three naves.

[edit] Record-holders
Longest nave in Denmark: Aarhus Cathedral, 93 metres (305 ft). Longest nave in England: St Albans Cathedral, St Albans (Anglican), 84 metres (276 ft). Longest nave in Ireland: St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. 91 metres (299 ft) (externally) Longest nave in France: Bourges Cathedral, 91 metres (299 ft), including choir where a crossing would be if there were transepts. Longest nave in Germany: Cologne cathedral, 58 metres (190 ft), including two bays between the towers. Longest nave in Italy: St Peter's Basilica in Rome, 91 metres (299 ft), in four bays. Longest nave in Spain: Seville, 60 metres (200 ft), in five bays. Longest nave in the United States: Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York City, United States (Episcopal), 70 metres (230 ft). Highest vaulted nave: Beauvais Cathedral, France, 48 metres (157 ft) high but only one bay of the nave was actually built but choir and transepts were completed to the same height. Highest completed nave: Rome, St. Peter's, Italy, 46 metres (151 ft) high. Highest completed vaulted nave: Cathedral of Milan, Italy, 45 metres (148 ft) high.

[edit] See also

Abbey, with architectural discussion and groundplans Cathedral architecture Cathedral diagram List of highest church naves