Of all the stories of the greatest Gothic cathedrals, the tale of Beauvais is the most exciting. Construction of the Gothic cathedral began in 1225 at a time of bitter turmoil when France was establishing itself as a nation within its familiar modern geographical bounds. Beauvais, the tallest cathedral in France, was never completed, having endured two major collapses and a series of structural crises that continues to this day. Our Sketchup animation follows this dramatic narrative, allowing the viewer to experience and understand the famous collapse that brought down the upper choir in 1284 as well as the underlying design features that led to that disaster. Particularly intriguing is the visualization of the short-lived crossing tower constructed in the mid-sixteenth century and the rivalry between S-Pierre of Beauvais and Saint Peter’s in Rome.
It is hoped that besides appealing to a general audience of cathedral fans, this movie will be useful in the context of the classroom at high-school and university levels.
Expand description and more details
This animation documents the construction, collapses, and numerous reconstructions of Beauvais from the 13th century to the present. While the construction time-lapses of Notre-Dame of Paris and Amiens on this website show finished cathedrals, this time-lapse of Beauvais illustrates a cathedral of unfinished ambition.
Beauvais Cathedral, fifty miles north of Paris, was the world’s tallest Gothic cathedral. It was the site of two of the largest structural collapses of the middle ages: the choir in 1284 and the spire in 1573. Starting in the 12th century at the church of Saint-Denis in Paris, a series of medieval cathedrals rose in northern France and southern England. As regional cities tried to outdo each other in trade and power, each cathedral was larger and taller than those previous. Notre-Dame of Paris, Chartres, Amiens, and Beauvais followed each other in succession and in competition. Vaults became larger and wider, while columns became narrower and taller, and ornament became more detailed and extensive. Cathedral interiors increased in size from 12th-century Saint-Denis (~30 feet wide and ~50 feet high) to 16th-century Beauvais (50 wide and 150 high). The crowning moment came in 1569 when the stone, wood, and lead spire of Beauvais rose to an astonishing 450 feet, an ambitious height that would not be surpassed by many other structures in Europe until the modern age of steel skyscrapers. Just four years later, the spire collapsed and was never rebuilt. The height of medieval cathedral construction was over.
Competition between cathedrals for height and grandeur:
Images of the unfinished cathedral:
Directed by Stephen Murray
Produced by Myles Zhang
Special thanks to Étienne Hamon
Source files
Creating this animation required creating a computer model of the entire cathedral at all stages of construction. This model is shared below; click and drag your cursor to move around this virtual space.
Download high-resolution image stills from construction sequence
Click here to view image stills from 1220s fire to 1284 collapse
View the structural collapse in 1284
View the rebuilding of the cathedral from 1284 to 1300
View images from 1284 collapse to 1550s transept construction
View proposals for completing cathedral
View sections and plans of the contemporary cathedral
Proposed cathedral vs. actual extent of construction by 1573 collapse
Image sources
Hand-drawn image textures used in this model are based on actual scanned drawings of the cathedral’s floorplan, choir section, choir elevation, and hemicyle section.
Audio sources
High medieval music: Viderunt Omnes by Pérotin, 1198
Late medieval music: Ave Maria by Josquin des Prez, c.1475
Contemporary cathedral: Pierre de Soleil by Philip Glass, 1986
Sound of material buckling
Sound of structural collapse
Further reading
Stephen Murray. Beauvais Cathedral: Architecture of Transcendence. Princeton University Press, 1989.
Visit Mapping Gothic for further photos and a panoramic tour of the cathedral interior.
Visit this link to download image stills of the cathedral at various stages of completion, for reuse in print publications.