The Eglise (Church) of Saint-Germain-des-Pres is the oldest church in Paris, originally built under King Childebert between 550 and 558. It is pre-gothic but shares many features with the gothic cathedrals, including the radiating chapels at the rear. My picture shows the Chapel of Saint Germain at the rear, which "gives an accurate idea of the original construction of the radiating chapels."
The Chapel of Saint Benedict in the same building, and includes Rene Descartes' tomb.
In contrast to earlier Romanesque cathedrals, the gothic cathedrals moved the building's structural support from the solid walls to a skeleton of pointed arches and ribbed vaults inside and flying buttresses outside. So, the ceiling could be raised and large (stained glass) windows added in the walls, creating height and lightness inside. The Saint Denis basilica/cathedral was the first gothic cathedral, built on the site of a previous abbey starting in 1135. It's in a suburb north of Paris -- I took the metro there.
In addition to being the first gothic cathedral, Saint Denis was also the main necropolis for French kings and queens, and many queens were crowned there. 42 kings and 32 queens were buried there, including nearly all from the 10th to the 18th centuries. (During the French Revolution, the remains were exhumed, dumped into a mass grave, and probably lost, although the Saint Denis ossuary now purports to hold them.) Pepin the Short, the first Carolingian king, was anointed by the pope there in 754.
My picture is the recumbent statue for Clovis, the first French King (Clovis ruled 481-509, statue is from around 1263).
The cathedral in Laon was started in 1160 and is another example of an early gothic cathedral. The walls of the nave (central corridor of the interior) is distinctive for its four levels: nave arcade, gallery, triforium, and clerestory, "...all features found in Romanesque architecture but never together in the same building...." It was pouring rain when I got to Laon, so I had the cathedral almost to myself.
The cathedral in Amiens, begun in 1220, is the largest in France.
The interior of the Amiens cathedral: "The High Gothic style...reaches its climax...in the interior of the Amiens Cathedral....The breathtaking height...is the dominant achievement both technically and aesthetically....[the height of the nave arcade] alone is almost as high (70 feet) as the entire four-story elevation of Laon (78 feet)."
The impetus for building the Amiens cathedral was to house a relic taken from Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, the supposed head of John the Baptist.
The first king of France, Clovis, was baptized at the site of the Reims cathedral in 496, and French kings were crowned there, with Joan of Arc famously attending the coronation of Charles VII in 1429. The cathedral has thousands of sculptures: "Gothic classicism reached its climax in some of these Reims statues. The most famous of them is the Visitation group, which was carved between 1230 and 1233. It depicts the Virgin Mary announcing the news of her pregnancy to her cousin Elizabeth." The Visitation group are the two figures on the right in my picture, while the two figures on the left are the Annunciation group, the angel Gabriel and Mary again.
The Rouen cathedral. Although the gothic cathedrals are all similar, the Rouen facade is more complex and irregular than the others I saw. The site was visited by Charlemagne in 769 A.D.; captured by the english Henry V in 1419; Joan of Arc was burned by the English a few blocks away in 1431; Monet famously painted the cathedral facade more than 30 times in 1892-3.
