Chartres Cathedral

    This building is the prototype Gothic building, but the cathedral is in fact a mix of different styles. Built in a relatively short period of time, it is hailed as a "beautifully unified" building. In reality, there are numerous subtle adjustment and variations in the details.  The Chartres Cathedral boasts the larges maze of any church in the world and the most stained glass windows.

    The South tower was completed in the 1160, and the North tower was completed in the 1150 and rebuilt in 1513 after the destruction of the wooden steeple by the fire, hence the miss-matched towers.

    The rose window was added in the early 13th century, and the central portal, called the Portal Royal, was completed about 1355.

    The cathedral employs an architectural technique called the flying buttress.  Flying buttresses are the arch structures protruding from the walls.  The technique, first developed in the High Middle Ages, allowed cathedrals to reach unprecedented heights.  Because of the weight of the ceilings, the walls need to be thick enough to support them, however, the higher they are built and the thicker the walls need to be, and in order to make a sufficiently large space inside, the walls needed to be far apart.  To make a church the same size as Chartres without the flying buttress would require walls more than 30 feet thick, giant arches inside, and no windows.  This would make a dark and cramped church, so instead the arches are moved outside, allowing the walls to be thinned and with windows.  The end effect is a vast inner space, with very tall narrow columns, large windows, and high vaulted ceilings.  The buttresses on the outside transfer the force of the vaults spreading to the buttress arch, which is transferred down to the ground.  This keeps the cathedral from forcing itself apart at the top, leading to collapse.  The buttresses themselves are usually enclosed, having a low ceiling part of the cathedral on both sides of the main space.  Most cathedrals use the flying buttress technique to create the huge windowed space.  The bell towers don't have buttresses, so they are actually 30 feet thick at the base, but since they are aren't designed to have any space inside anyway, the flying buttresses aren't used.