Laon (Aisne), Notre-Dame, west
façade. Photograph courtesy of
Whitney S.Stoddard.
redoubt for the region and one of the favored residences of the Carolingian kings. The
12th-century keep was torn down only in the 1830s. The diocese was created by St. Remi
in the late 5th century, but the first mention of a cathedral church is in a poem by Alcuin.
The Carolingian church was renovated by Adalbero in the 10th century and damaged
during the civil unrest of 1112. The present Gothic cathedral was begun ca. 1155. In
addition, Laon had a Benedictine abbey, Saint-Vincent; an Augustinian priory, Saint-
Jean; and an important Premonstratensian abbey, Saint-Martin, as well as a Templars
church, a leprosarium, and a number of parish churches. Of the medieval churches, only
the cathedral, Saint-Martin, and the Templars church survive.
The Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame was completed in five major periods of
construction, between ca. 1155 and ca. 1225. The plan of the first church called for a
shallow chevet of three bays surrounded by an ambulatory, hardly enough space for the
large numbers of clergy occasioned by prosperity from wine production. Projecting
transept arms with two-storied eastern chapels open from the dramatic lantern tower. The
long nave ends in the first attempt to rethink the meaning of the façade as an entrance
into the church in the 12th century. It was the plan of the two identical transept arms,
opening from the crossing, with their large rose windows, that suggested to the builder
the repetition of the plan of the nave for the new chevet, both highlighted by their huge
rose windows.
Laon is one of the first Early Gothic buildings with a four-story elevation, including
arcades and aisles, vaulted galleries connected by platforms across the transept façades, a
wall passage that also continued across the transept arms, and clerestory windows. The
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