Cathedral Notre-Dame de Laon

See also: Notre-Dame

The Cathédrale Notre-Dame of Laon is one of the first Cathédrale S Gothic S of France. Built after that of Saint-Denis and that of Boundary-line, it is chronologically former to the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. It is established on the “Acropole” of Laon, the high city overhanging the plain of 100 meters. It was built with the site of a first cathedral built under the episcopate of the bishop Gerfrid, (774 - † 799). This first monument, dedicated in the honor of the saint Saver and holy Marie, was devoted on September 6th 800 in the presence of Charlemagne.

She undergoes a fire at the time of the communal insurrection which has occurred on Thursday, April 25 after Easter of the year 1112. During this revolt, the Gaudry bishop, hated by the population of Laon, was killed whereas it had hidden in a barrel of the storeroom of évêché sound contiguous to the cathedral.

The construction of the current building is initiated by the bishop Gauthier de Mortagne. It begins in 1155 and continues until in 1235. It is a Gothic cathedral of Style of transition. It was taken in model by many Gothic buildings like the cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Magdeburg, Limbourg, Lausanne, Dijon.

It has four turns, Campanile S or bell-towers whose Villard de Honnecourt said that they were the " more beautiful of the monde". The two towers of the frontage are decorated statues of oxen life size. They refer to a legend, according to which the ox charged to assemble in top of the “acropolis” of Laon materials necessary to the construction of the cathedral, exhausted this rise, would have been replaced by an ox miraculeusement appeared.

Dimensions

Length: 110,50 m
Width: 30,65 m
Height under the Nave: 26 m
Height under the Turn-lantern: 42 m
Length of the Transept: 56 m
Height of the turns of frontage: 56 m
Height of the tower of the transept: 60 m

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