Michael Arditti

Sixteen cathedrals to see before you die

Emma J. Wells focuses on the Gothic style as ‘the metaphorical and physical exemplar of the Celestial City’

King Dagobert I oversees the construction of the cathedral of Saint-Denis. From the illuminated manuscript Les Grandes Chroniques de France. [Alamy] 
issue 27 August 2022

There can be no clearer illustration of the central role that great cathedrals continue to play in a nation’s life than the outpouring of grief that greeted the catastrophic blaze in Notre-Dame in 2019. President Macron described the building as ‘our history, our literature, our imagination, the place where we experienced all our greatest moments’.

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