Beauvais Cathedral

About

Beauvais Cathedral, otherwise known as the Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais (French: Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais; Picard: Cathedral of Saint-Pire ed Bieuvé), is a Catholic church in the northern town of Beauvais, Oise, France. It is the seat of the Bishop of Beauvais, Noyon and Senlis and has been listed as a national monument since 1840. The cathedral consists of a 13th-century kiln, with an apse and seven polygonal apsal chapels reached by an ambiguity, joined to a 16th-century transept.

It has the highest Gothic kiln in the world: 48.5 meters (159 ft) under valt. From 1569 to 1573 the cathedral of Beauvais was, with its tower of 153 m (502 ft), the highest human construction of the world. Its designers had the ambition to make it the larget Gothic cathedral in France, ahead of Amiens and Notre-Dame de Paris.

A victim of two collapses, one in the 13th century, the other in the 16th century, it remains finalized today; only the kiln and the transept were built, and the planned nave was never constructed. The memory of the previous 10th-century Romanesque cathedral, known as the Basse Œuvre ("Lower Work"), still occupied the intended site of the nave.