Gothic architecture, used in cathedrals, a carace?? or city halls , became mainstream in around 12 to 16th century and it was magnificent, gorgeous and an innovative architectural technique. Although it was inspired by the Romanesque style, we can see different elements between two of them. Gothic style has features such as a thinner walls, wide windows, and stained glass, compared to Romanesque architecture, As some of my classmates wrote, there are some Gothic styles which have the pointed arches, flying buttresses and the ribbed vaults. Then, I believe that all of them are used to give Gothic buildings more height and light.(I assume you mean light as in sunlight, not weight).The pointed arches were changed from round arches in Romanesque. Therefore, architects were able to build higher ceilings, because pointed arches can withstand greater pressure. Moreover, flying arches and the ribbed vaults not only helped to build taller but also brighter buildings. A barrel vault didn’t bear the pressure of the weight of the ceiling; however, they made a style of rib vault, which is crossed and complicated, in other words, reduced the burden of supporting the wall. Thanks to this wonderful new style, the weight could be divided which made the inside brighter and taller. Furthermore, they built a thin wall instead of a thick one and it became possible to put a wide windows with stained glass. For instance, we can see the great Gothic Cathedrals, Basilique de Saint-Denis or the Chartres Cathedral in France (early pages in chapter 13) . In my opinion, this style is related with the economy in that time, because as we learned in previous chapters, after many ethics made a move on to other place(??), some farmers came to city to work. They may have felt stressed, because it was not their hometown and they didn’t know each other at all. Thus, they wanted to seek spiritual salvation. As set out above, there are many kinds of beautiful stained glass windows in the Gothic style. In fact, a lot of these tell the stories from the Bible because many people couldn't read, so they painted the stories on the stained glass windows and everyone was able to learn and understand the Bible. Some people called it “ A huge Bible” which means a Bible by itself(??). I believe that the cathedral was a sacred ground to forget all of hard things for the people at that time and think about “heaven”, which was up high and brighter.



