Architecture

While each architectural era has its distinctive features, there are some elements, general floor plans, and terms common to many.

From the Romanesque period on, most churches consist either of a single wide aisle, or a wide central nave flanked by two narrow aisles. A row of columns, or square stacks of masonry called piers, connected by arches, separates the aisles from the nave.

This main nave/aisle assemblage is usually crossed by a perpendicular corridor called a transept near the far, east end of the church so that the floor plan looks like a Latin cross (shaped like a lowercase "t"). At the east end sits the holy altar. This is usually on a raised dais and in the entrance to -- or, especially later, just in front of -- the large chapel formed by the shorter, far end of the cross. If this large, main chapel is rounded off on the end, it is called an apse; it is often elongated and filled with the stalls of the choir. Some churches, especially after the Renaissance when mathematical proportion became important, were built on a Greek cross plan, each axis the same length, like a giant "+."

It's worth pointing out that very few buildings (especially churches) were built in one particular style. These massive, expensive structures often took centuries to complete, during which time tastes would change and plans would be altered.

Ancient Roman (B.C. 125-450 A.D.)

France was Rome's first transalpine conquest, and the legions of Julius Caesar quickly subdued the Celtic tribes across France, converting it into Roman Gaul and importing Roman building concepts.

Identifiable Features

· The load-bearing arch.

· The use of concrete and brick.

Best Examples

· Parvis Archaeological Excavations. The Romanized village of Lutèce, later renamed after its native Parisii tribe of Celtic Gauls, is partially excavated under place du Parvis in front of Notre-Dame.

· Musée de Cluny. This medieval monastery was built on top of a Roman baths complex, remnants of which are still visible on the grounds outside and in the huge preserved frigidarium (the cold-water bath) that is now a room of the museum. The museum itself also contains ancient statuary.

Romanesque (800-1100)

Romanesque architects concentrated on building large churches with wide aisles to accommodate the population that came to hear Mass and worship at the altars of various saints. The Romanesque took its inspiration from ancient Rome (hence the name). Early Christians in Italy had adapted the basilica (ancient Roman law-court buildings) to become churches. Few examples of the Romanesque remain in Paris, however, with most churches having been rebuilt in later eras.

Identifiable Features

· Rounded arches. These load-bearing architectural devices allowed the architects to open up wide naves and spaces, channeling all the weight of the stone walls and ceiling across the curve of the arch and down into the ground via the columns or pilasters.

· Thick walls, infrequent and small windows, and huge piers. These were necessary to support the weight of all that masonry, giving Romanesque churches a dark, somber, mysterious, and often oppressive feeling.

· Apse. This rounded space behind the altar in many Romanesque churches opens up the holiest, east end of the church.

· Radiating chapels. These smaller chapels began to sprout off the east end of the church, especially later in the Romanesque period, often in the form of a fan of minichapels radiating off the apse.

· Ambulatory. This curving corridor separates the altar and choir area from the ring of smaller, radiating chapels. This, too, was a convention of the later Romanesque and carried into the Gothic.

Best Examples

· St-Germain-des-Prés. The overall building is Romanesque, including the fine sculpted column capitals near the entrance of the left aisle; only the far left corner is original, the others are copies. By the time builders got to creating the choir, the early Gothic was on -- note the pointy arches. Over the (early Renaissance) portal is a Romanesque carving of the Last Judgment.

· St-Julien-le-Pauvre. This small church has a general Romanesque plan overwritten by later Gothic embellishments, including the facade.

Gothic (1100-1500)

By the 12th century, engineering developments freed church architecture from the heavy, thick walls of Romanesque structures and allowed ceilings to soar, walls to thin, and windows to proliferate.

Instead of dark, somber, relatively unadorned Romanesque interiors that forced the eyes of the faithful toward the altar, the Gothic interior enticed the churchgoers' gaze upward to high ceilings filled with light. The priests still conducted Mass in Latin, but now peasants could "read" the stories told in pictures in the stained-glass windows.

The squat, brooding exteriors of the Romanesque fortresses of God were replaced by graceful buttresses and spires that soared above town centers.

Identifiable Features

· Pointed arches. The most significant development of the Gothic era was the discovery that pointed arches could carry far more weight than rounded ones.

· Cross vaults. Instead of being flat, the square patch of ceiling between four columns arches up to a point in the center, creating four sail shapes, sort of like the underside of a pyramid. The "X" separating these four sails is often reinforced with ridges called ribbing. As the Gothic progressed, four-sided cross vaults became six- or eight-sided as architects played with the angles.

· Flying buttresses. These free-standing exterior pillars connected by graceful, thin arms of stone help channel the weight of the building and its roof out and down into the ground. To help counter the cross forces involved in this engineering sleight of hand, the piers of buttresses were often topped by heavy pinnacles, which took the form of minispires or statues.

· Spires. These pinnacles of masonry seem to defy gravity and reach toward heaven itself.

· Gargoyles. Disguised as wide-mouthed creatures, gargoyles are actually drain spouts.

· Tracery. These lacy spider webs of carved stone grace the pointy ends of windows and sometimes the spans of ceiling vaults.

· Stained glass. Because pointy arches can carry more weight than rounded ones, windows could be larger and more numerous. They were often filled with Bible stories and symbolism writ in the colorful patterns of stained glass.

· Rose windows. Huge circular windows filled with tracery and "petals" of stained glass, rose windows often appear as the centerpiece of facades and, in some larger churches, at the ends of transepts as well.

· Ambulatory. The Gothic made much greater use of this corridor of space wrapping behind the apse and often around a choir (the boxed-off area, usually behind the altar, where the choir sat and sang).

· Choir screen. Serving as the inner wall of the ambulatory and the outer wall of the choir section, choir screens are often decorated with carvings or serve as tombs.

Best Examples

· Basilique St-Denis (1140-44). Today you'll find the world's first Gothic cathedral in a Paris suburb.

· Cathédrale de Chartres (1194-1220). This Gothic masterpiece boasts good statuary, a soaring spire, and some 150 glorious stained-glass windows.

· Cathédrale de Notre-Dame (1163-1250). This famous cathedral possesses pinnacled flying buttresses, a trio of France's best rose windows, good portal carvings, a choir screen of deeply carved reliefs, and spiffy gargoyles (though many of those are actually 19th-century neo-Gothic).

Renaissance (1500-1630)

In architecture, as in painting, the Renaissance came from Italy and was only slowly Frenchified. And, as in painting, its rules stressed proportion, order, classical inspiration, and precision to create unified, balanced structures.

Identifiable Features

· Proportion and symmetry. Other than a close eye to these Renaissance ideals, little specifically identifies buildings of this period.

· Steeply pitched roofs. Many roofs are of pale stone with dark gray tiles. This feature is a throwback to medieval sensibilities, but because almost no medieval mansions survive in Paris, the buildings that do sport steep roofs tend to be Renaissance.

· Dormer windows. These tend to be tall and made of stone, which differentiates them from the less extravagant, wooden ones of later periods.

Best Examples

· Hôtel Carnavalet (1544). This Renaissance mansion is the only 16th-century hotel left in Paris. It contains the Musée Carnavalet, a museum devoted to the history of Paris and the French Revolution.

· Place des Vosges. This square is lined by Renaissance mansions rising above a lovely arcaded corridor that wraps all the way around.

Classicism & Rococo (1630-1800)

While Italy and Germany embraced the opulent baroque, France took the fundamentals of Renaissance classicism even further, becoming more imitative of ancient models -- this represents a change from the Renaissance preference to find inspiration in the classic era.

During the reign of Louis XIV, art and architecture were subservient to political ends. Buildings were grandiose and severely ordered on the Versailles model. Opulence was saved for interior decoration, which increasingly (especially 1715-50, after the death of Louis XIV) became an excessively detailed and self-indulgent rococo (rocaille in French). Externally, this later style is only noticeable by a greater elegance and delicacy.

Rococo tastes didn't last long, though, and soon a neoclassical movement was raising structures, such as Paris's Panthéon (1758), even more strictly based on ancient models than the earlier classicism was.

Identifiable Features

· Symmetrical, rectangular structures. French classicism concentrated on horizontal and vertical lines and simple proportions.

· Classical throwbacks. Classicism was favored for the very fact that it brought back such elements as classical orders (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian) and projecting central sections topped by triangular pediments.

· Mansard roofs. A defining feature and true French trademark developed by François Mansart (1598-1666) in the early 15th century, a mansard roof has a double slope, the lower being longer and steeper than the upper.

· Dormer windows. Unlike the larger Renaissance ones flanked by showy stone scrolls, later dormers tended to be lower, less extravagant, and wooden.

· Oeil-de-bouef windows. These small, round "ox-eye" windows poke out of the roof's slope.

· Excessive detail. Rococo interior decoration is often asymmetrical and abstract with shell-like forms and many C- and S-curves. Naturalistic flowers and trees are sometimes playfully introduced.

Best Examples

· Palais du Louvre (1650-70). A collaborative classical masterpiece, the Louvre was designed as a palace. Le Vau (1612-70) was its chief architect, along with collaborators François Mansart (1598-1666), the interior decorator Charles Le Brun (1619-90), and the unparalleled landscape gardener André Le Nôtre (1613-1700). The structure subsequently had several purposes before becoming a museum.

· Versailles (1669-85). Versailles is France's -- indeed, Europe's -- grandest palace, the Divine Monarchy writ as a statement of fussily decorative, politically charged classical architecture, though the interior was redecorated in more flamboyant styles. The chief architects of its complete overhaul under Louis XIV were the oft-used team of Le Vau, Mansart, Le Brun, and Le Nôtre. Mansart's grand-nephew (and Louis XIV's chief architect) Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708) took over after Le Vau's death, changing much of the exterior look. The Clock Room is a good example of rococo interior decoration.

The 19th Century

Architectural styles in 19th-century Paris were eclectic, beginning in a severe classical mode and ending with an identity crisis torn between Industrial Age technology and Art Nouveau organic. The "Identifiable Features" section explores the main facets of competing styles during this turbulent century.

Identifiable Features

· First Empire. Elegant, neoclassical furnishings -- distinguished by strong lines often accented with a simple curve -- became the rage during Napoleon's reign.

· Second Empire. Napoleon III's reign saw the eclectic Second Empire reinterpret classicism in an ornate, dramatic mode. Urban planning was the architectural rage, and Paris became a city of wide boulevards courtesy of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-91), commissioned by Napoleon III in 1852 to redesign the city. Paris owes much of its remarkably unified look to Haussmann, who drew his beloved thoroughfares directly across the city, tearing down existing structures along the way. He lined the boulevards with simple, six-story apartment blocks, like elongated 18th-century town houses with continuous balconies wrapping around the third and sixth floors and mansard roofs with dormer windows.

· Third Republic. Expositions in 1878, 1889, and 1900 were the catalysts for constructing huge glass-and-steel structures that showed off modern techniques and the engineering prowess of the Industrial Revolution. This produced such Parisian monuments as the Tour Eiffel and Sacré-Coeur.

· Art Nouveau. These architects and decorators rebelled against the Third Republic era of mass production by stressing the uniqueness of craft. They created asymmetrical, curvaceous designs based on organic inspiration (plants and flowers) in such mediums as wrought iron, stained glass, tile, and hand-painted wallpaper.

Best Examples

· Palais de Fontainebleau. Napoleon spent his imperial decade (1804-14) refurbishing his quarters in this palace in First Empire style.

· Arc de Triomphe (1836). Napoleon's oversize imitation of a Roman triumphal arch is the ultimate paean to the classical era. The arch presides over L'Etoile, an intersection of 12 wide boulevards laid out by Baron Haussmann in the Second Empire.

· Tour Eiffel (1889). Under the Third Republic, the French wanted to show how far they had come in the 100 years since the Revolution. They hired Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) to slap together the world's tallest structure, a temporary 320m (1,050-ft.) tower made of riveted steel girders. Everyone agreed it was tall; most thought it was ugly and completely lacking in aesthetics. Its usefulness as a radio transmitter saved Eiffel's tower from being torn down.

· Métro station entrances. Art Nouveau was less an architectural mode than a decorative movement. You can still find some of the original Art Nouveau Métro entrances designed by Hector Guimard (1867-1942). A recently renovated entrance is at the Porte Dauphine station on the No. 2 line.

The 20th Century

France commissioned some ambitious architectural projects in the last century, most of them the grand projets of the late François Mitterrand. The majority were considered controversial or even offensive when completed. Only slowly have structures such as the Centre Pompidou or Louvre's glass pyramids become accepted. Over time, a lucky few may even become as beloved as the once-despised Tour Eiffel.

Identifiable Features

· Other than a concerted effort to be unique, break convention, and look stunningly modern, nothing communally identifies France's recent architecture.

Best Examples

· Centre Pompidou (1977). Brit Richard Rogers (b. 1933) and Italian Renzo Piano (b. 1937) turned architecture inside out -- literally -- to craft Paris's eye-popping modern-art museum. Exposed pipes, steel supports, and plastic-tube escalators wrap around the exterior.

· Louvre's glass pyramids (1989). Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei (b. 1917) was called in to cap the Louvre's new underground entrance with these pyramids in the center of the Palais du Louvre's 17th-century courtyard.

· Opéra Bastille (1989). In 1989, Paris's opera company moved into this curvaceous, dark glass mound of space designed by Canadian Carlos Ott. Unfortunately, the acoustics have been lambasted.