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Today was the first full day of the third and last leg of this cathedral journey.  I am back with a group of cathedral lovers and our Lecturer is Dr. Jana Gajdosova who is the Director of the British Archaeological Association.  Tremendous credentials, a specialist in medieval architecture, and she is very nice!  The goal of the tour is to study French Gothic from around 1140 – 1280, a period of experimentation and rapid change. 

We first toured The Cathedral of Our Lady of Noyon, or in French, Cathedrale Notre-Dame.  It was one of the earliest gothic cathedrals and has characteristics of both Gothic and Romanesque.  The building that exists today was started around 1150.  But the first cathedral on the site was started around 531 and it was here that Charlemagne was crowned King of Neustria.  Ruined by Viking invasions in 859, a new cathedral was built in the Carolingian period.  This building, in turn, was damaged by fire so a replacement – and the current – structure came into being.  As we have seen repeatedly, construction began on the east end, ending with West Door completion in 1230.

Depending on the part we are in, the inside has four or five distinguishable levels, rather than the usual three (arcade, gallery, clerestory).  Instead, it has an arcade, gallery, triforium, in sections a second triforium, then a clerestory.  Although considered gothic, the church had a residual “feeling” of Romanesque.  Besides the semicircular arches, there is a lot of stone.  It did not have that “light and airy” atmosphere one expects of gothic.  Yet architectural experimentation is everywhere – the transepts have rounded ends rather than the more usual flat ends, and the vaulting is quadripartite, rather than the more usual (for its time) sexpartite or six-sectioned vaults.

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