Europe's Great
Churches
Renaissance & Baroque · 1506–1626
St. Peter's Basilica
Vatican City, Vatican · Catholic
Built over the tomb of the Apostle.
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1506–1626
St. Peter's Basilica
Renaissance & Baroque
1473–1481
Sistine Chapel
Renaissance
1163–1345
Notre-Dame de Paris
French Gothic
1194–1220
Chartres Cathedral
High Gothic
532–537
Hagia Sophia
Byzantine
1296–1436
Duomo of Florence
Gothic & Renaissance
1248–1880
Cologne Cathedral
High Gothic
1882–present
Sagrada Família
Catalan Modernisme
966–1523
Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey
Romanesque & Gothic
How Europe built the sacred
Three architectural languages, each finding a different balance between weight, space and light.
Constantinople · 537
Byzantine space
Hagia Sophia joins a central dome to longitudinal space. Pendentives carry the circular dome above a square bay; the luminous ring of windows makes its mass appear almost immaterial.
Curator’s observation
Its successive lives as church, mosque, museum and mosque again must be distinguished. Its Christian mosaics belong to a long and complex history.
Images: Wikimedia Commons. Historical works and architectural photographs; source and attribution are available through the original image.
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