Notre-Dame de Paris is begun
Work starts on the cathedral on the Ile de la Cite. Its nave becomes one of the earliest large-scale applications of the flying buttress - though whether the flyers are original to the 12th-century campaign or belong to a later alteration has been argued for more than a century, because the fabric has been rebuilt enough to blur the evidence.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Notre-Dame de Paris · site · France
- The flying buttress · technology system · Western Europe · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Experiments in Gothic Structure
Photoelastic model studies of Gothic structures arguing that wind loading on the high roof and clerestory, rather than vault thrust alone, was a principal design driver for flying buttresses, and that upper flyers are best explained as wind bracing. V55 verification basis: real and widely cited; not read in this session, and the argument is summarised here from its reception rather than from the text.
MIT Press, Robert Mark · 1982 · Partly verified
Mark, R., Experiments in Gothic Structure, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1982
Recorded on Notre-Dame de Paris
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Notre-Dame de Paris reopens for worship · 2024-12-08
- Fire destroys the roof and spire of Notre-Dame de Paris · 2019-04-15
- The high vaults of Chartres close at about 36-37 m · c. 1220