Notre-Dame d'Amiens
— — the largest of the French Gothic churches.
Not only on a wall.
“The cathedral at Amiens, begun in 1220, holds the largest interior volume of any cathedral in France. Its west front carries the carved kings and the figure of the Beau Dieu above the central door; inside, the nave climbs forty-two metres to a vault held up by limestone that turns gold in the afternoon. The labyrinth in the floor of the nave is the oldest piece of stonework left in the church. from the studio
Notre-Dame d'Amiens, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Notre-Dame d'Amiens stands at the centre of Amiens, the prefecture of the Somme department in Hauts-de-France, about a hundred and twenty kilometres north of Paris. Construction began in 1220 under Bishop Évrard de Fouilloy, with Robert de Luzarches as the first master mason, and the main fabric was largely complete by 1270, a single campaign that gives the cathedral an unusual stylistic unity. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1981 as one of the most fully realised examples of High Gothic architecture in France.
The nave rises to a vault forty-two metres above the floor, the tallest complete Gothic vault in France, and the interior volume of roughly two hundred thousand cubic metres makes Amiens the largest French cathedral by that measure. The west front carries the Gallery of Kings and three deeply receded portals, with the figure known as the Beau Dieu in the trumeau of the central door. The labyrinth set into the floor of the nave, originally laid in 1288 and re-laid in the nineteenth century, names the architects and the year work began.
The cathedral is open to visitors most days, with restricted hours around services; entry to the main nave is free, while the towers and the treasury are ticketed and run by the Centre des monuments nationaux. The summer Chroma show projects the polychromy that once coloured the west front back onto the stone after dark from mid-June through September, and a winter run repeats the projection through December and early January. The town centre and Saint-Leu quarter sit a short walk to the north along the Somme.