Elizabeth Boyle O’Reilly’s How France Built Her Cathedrals explores the soaring achievement of French Gothic architecture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. O’Reilly leads the reader through Chartres, Notre-Dame, Reims, Amiens, and the other great cathedrals, describing their construction, sculpture, stained glass, and the faith and ambition that raised them. She combines architectural detail with the human story of the builders, bishops, and townspeople who created these masterpieces of the medieval imagination.
Richly informed and warmly written, the book conveys both the technical daring and the spiritual aspiration behind the Gothic age. O’Reilly situates each cathedral within the religious and civic life of its city, showing how stone and glass expressed the medieval vision of heaven. Lovers of architecture, art history, and medieval France will find it a rewarding guide.