A French stained-glass panel of 1270, a round scene of figures in red, blue and green glass held in lead
Stained Glass Panel, 1270
Marked Durham

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The cathedral builders

Masons, carpenters and glaziers raised cathedrals of stone and coloured glass across Europe, inventing pointed arches and flying buttresses to make them taller and lighter.

Place
Durham · Saint-Denis · Chartres · Notre-Dame de ParisEurope
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IRomanesque: thick walls
  2. IIThe pointed arch
  3. IIIFlying buttresses
  4. IVStained glass
  5. VMasons and their marks
  6. VIWho paid?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Abbot Suger
  • Villard de Honnecourt
  • William of Sens

Objects

  • Chartres’s windows
  • Villard’s sketchbook

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1050 to 1400. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?