Notre-Dame d'Amiens

In 1206 Amiens received a relic venerated as the head of John the Baptist, brought from Constantinople, and the city became a major place of pilgrimage. The Romanesque cathedral, built between 1137 and 1152, burned in 1218, and in 1220 Bishop Evrard de Fouilloy laid the first stone of a new church planned by the master builder Robert de Luzarches.

Luzarches built with stones cut to standard sizes and shapes instead of shaping each piece for its place. He was followed by Thomas de Cormont and then by Thomas's son Renaud, and the main structure was completed in less than a century. Unusually, the work ran from the nave in the west towards the east; the walls rise 42 m to the vaults, and at about 200,000 m3 the cathedral is the largest in France by volume.

When cracks appeared in the crossing piers, Pierre Tarisel in 1498 fitted a wrought-iron chain at triforium level. It was put in red-hot so that it tightened as it cooled, holding the piers against spreading, and it is still in place. Much of the sculpture was smashed during the Revolution, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc led the restoration from 1849 to 1874; the cathedral was inscribed in 1981, and the restoration of the west front completed in 2001 revealed traces of the sculptures' original paint.