"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Amiens Cathedral, or formally called Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens, is one of the most beautiful and breathtaking monuments from the Middle Ages.
The construction started in 1220 and was not complete until the north tower was finished in 1401. The beautiful nave, pictured above, is the tallest completed nave in France.
The cathedral is my favorite Gothic edifice. A vision of anonymous architects and craftsmen of a bygone era is beautifully perfected and imaginatively executed in this building, and I marvel at how they, with handful of primitive tools and without having knowledge of the modern engineering, can dare to create such an inspiring monument.
The rib buttresses, traceries, stained-glass windows, and sculptures add to the interior's dynamic movement towards the sky. Sadly, many stained-glass windows of Amiens cathedral were destroyed during two World Wars, but one can still easily conjure and imagine a solemn atmosphere of the cathedral before the destruction.
Architecture once was a vocabulary, a statement, of the society as a whole. Now it became a voice of divided individuals and economic interests..
Probably no society today would devote this much time and effort to build such a glorious edifice. Such is the fate of architecture.
One can stop and wonder, what happened? What drove these ancient people, who probably were impoverished and more susceptible to diseases, to build a pyramid or a cathedral, while we the modern men cannot possibly imagine to do so?
Some day I want to visit and pay tribute to this cathedral, and to all the hands that created it, in person.
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