Heart of Europe by Ralph Adams Cram

BETWEEN Paris and Cologne, Strasbourg and Bruges lies, in little, nearly the whole history of northern architecture from Charlemagne to the last Louis of France, when it ceased to be an art and became a fashion. The greater part of Normandy lies, it is true, across the Seine, and is, for the time, beyond our field of vision, but, barring Caen, architectural significance is well concentrated in the triangle, Rouen, Dieppe, le Havre. The same is true of the old Royaume of France; though Chartres and Bourges lie to the south, the beginning, and in some sense the culmination, of Gothic is to be found between Seine and Somme. In the east, to the Rhine, we have practically all that Germany has contributed, except in the later days of the Renaissance.

If we like, we may go far beyond the dim and mysterious era of the Carolings, finding in Trèves old Roman ruins that take us back four or five centuries earlier, but the real history of this region begins with Charlemagne and takes us to his favourite city of Aix-la-Chapelle for the single, but vastly significant, building left us as evidence of his inspiration and his creative power. With the ending of this day-dream there comes a great silence, while civilisation and culture disappear again, to be restored two centuries later, far to the west, and at the hands of the Normans. Here we find St. Georges de Bocherville, Fécamp, and the inestimable and forgotten ruins of Jumièges. For transition to Gothic we have Senlis, Soissons, Noyon, with Laon and Paris as earliest Gothic of pure and consistent type; Châlons, Amiens, and Reims for culmination, and Abbeville, Rouen, Beauvais, Troyes, and Strasbourg for its sumptuous decline.