Abbey of Saint-Denis

Abbey church north of Paris where the kings of France were buried from the sixth century on. Between 1135 and 1144 Abbot Suger rebuilt the west front and the east end with a combination nobody had tried before: pointed arch, rib vault and coloured stained glass filling the walls with “heavenly” light. That combination produced the first fully Gothic building in history. Suger justified it in theological terms: light was a manifestation of the divine. The rest of the church was finished in mature Gothic between 1231 and 1281.

From early Gothic to full Gothic: the east end and parts of the west front belong to Suger’s campaign; the present nave, built in the thirteenth century, is already full Gothic. One building shows Gothic being born and Gothic grown up.