Medieval Architecture

Medieval Europe was built from far more than cathedrals and castles. Between about 1150 and 1550, people gathered in halls, worshipped in synagogues and raised barns alongside the great churches. Nicola Coldstream brings these buildings into the same history, asking how practical needs, wealth, belief and local skill shaped what was built.

Rather than letting the most famous French Gothic monuments stand for the whole period, she turns to the architecture of regions including Spain and central Europe. How did patrons leave their mark? What could builders achieve with stone, proportion and design? How did a building organise movement or proclaim the importance of a community? Coldstream follows those questions to the period when classical styles began to displace medieval ones, leaving a picture of architecture as work done by people for particular places and purposes.