Puzzle No. 92: When?

Around 1140 to 1144 Abbot Suger rebuilt the choir of the royal abbey church of Saint-Denis, near Paris, in a new style that combined the pointed arch, the rib vault and the flying buttress to dissolve solid walls into screens of stained glass. Suger conceived this luminous architecture as a 'lux nova' (new light) that would draw worshippers toward the divine. The choir of Saint-Denis, consecrated in 1144, is widely regarded as the first structure to unite all the defining elements of Gothic architecture. The style spread rapidly through France and beyond, inspiring the great cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, Amiens and Notre-Dame de Paris (begun 1163). Gothic building permitted taller, brighter interiors than the earlier Romanesque, and its cathedrals became vast collective undertakings that organised urban labour, civic pride and Church wealth over generations. The style dominated European religious and civic architecture for some 400 years and remains one of the most recognisable artistic legacies of the medieval West.

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