Gothic Architecture Trivia
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47 free Gothic Architecture trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Gothic architecture was called 'French work' by the people who built it and 'barbarous' by the Italians who buried it, and this quiz covers both the buildings and the arguments about them. It starts with the engineering: why the pointed arch changed everything, what a rib vault and a flying buttress actually do, how plate tracery became bar tracery, and what a gargoyle is for. Then it visits the great churches: Abbot Suger's Saint-Denis, Sens and Durham, Chartres and its tunic, Reims and its 2,300 statues, Beauvais and its collapse, the Sainte-Chapelle's walls of glass, and the giants of Cologne, Ulm, Strasbourg, Milan and Seville. There are questions on the phases and their names (Early English, Rayonnant, Decorated, Flamboyant, Perpendicular), on fan vaults and four-centred arches, on Villard de Honnecourt's sketchbook and Peter Parler's Prague, on Vasari and Wren and what they thought the style should be called, and on the Gothic Revival from Strawberry Hill to the Palace of Westminster. Easy questions suit anyone who has stood inside a cathedral; the expert tier asks about tiercerons and six-part vaults. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the style, its elements and the individual buildings, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is regarded as the defining design element of Gothic architecture?
The pointed arch
The pointed arch pushes less weight sideways than a round arch, and its height need not match its width, so vaults could climb higher.
Q 02Gothic architecture was supplanted from the mid-15th century by which style, born in Italy?
Renaissance
Renaissance forms spread slowly north, and in England and Belgium Gothic kept flourishing well into the 16th century.
Q 03Which architect led the 19th-century restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris, crowning it with a new spire?
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's workshop also carved new gargoyles and chimeras, and his spire was the one that collapsed in the 2019 fire.
Q 04What was the Gothic style called in medieval Latin?
Opus Francigenum
Opus Francigenum meant 'French work', yet Italian writers later called the very same style maniera tedesca, the 'German manner'.
Q 05Which Italian writer blamed the Goths for medieval architecture in 1550, popularising 'Gothic' as a sneer?
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists held the Goths, who had sacked Rome, responsible for wrecking ancient buildings and raising new ones in this style.
Q 06Christopher Wren argued that Gothic architecture really came from which people?
The Saracens
The Saracens, Wren's word for Muslims, were his answer, but his idea that Crusaders carried their arches home is now rejected.
Q 07The choir of which abbey near Paris, rebuilt in 1140-44, is considered the first fully Gothic building?
Saint-Denis
Saint-Denis's new choir swapped heavy walls for stained glass, to flood the church with what its abbot saw as divine light.
Q 08Which abbot, adviser to Louis VI and VII, drove the rebuilding of the royal abbey near Paris?
Suger
Suger also placed a circular rose window over the portal, a feature that soon became standard on Gothic façades.
Q 09Which external arched structure let Gothic walls become thinner and windows larger?
The flying buttress
The flying buttress later let Notre-Dame de Paris's builders stretch its upper windows downward, doing away with a whole storey of wall.
Q 10Which English king ordered Westminster Abbey rebuilt in the Gothic style from 1245?
Henry III
Henry III rebuilt the abbey around the old king's shrine, and became the first monarch buried there since Edward the Confessor himself.
Q 11Which cathedral, rebuilt after a 1194 fire, is regarded as the first High Gothic building?
Chartres
Chartres rose again within about 26 years of the fire, its builders simplifying the old elevation by doing away with the tribune galleries.
Q 12Which cathedral has the world's highest Gothic choir and partly collapsed in the 13th century?
Beauvais
Beauvais never got its nave: after part of the choir vault fell in 1284, only the choir and transept were ever completed.
Q 13Which French Gothic cathedral was the traditional coronation church of the kings of France?
Reims
Reims is where Joan of Arc brought the dauphin in 1429, so that he could be crowned there as king.
Q 21Which German cathedral, begun in 1248 and finished in 1880, is the world's tallest twin-spired church?
Cologne
Cologne's builders stopped around 1560, and when work finally resumed in the 1840s they stayed faithful to the original medieval plans.
Q 22Whose relics, carried off from Italy in 1164, was a great German Gothic cathedral planned to house?
The Three Kings
The Three Kings' relics made the city a magnet for pilgrims, and three crowns for them still sit on its coat of arms.
Q 23Which church, begun in 1377 and finished in 1890, has Germany's tallest church steeple?
Ulm Minster
Ulm Minster came through the Second World War barely damaged, even as bombing destroyed most of Ulm's medieval centre around it.
Q 14Which Gothic cathedral is the largest in France by interior volume?
Amiens
Amiens went up unusually fast for a Gothic cathedral, which gave it a rare unity of style and plan.
Q 15Which style, exemplified by the Sainte-Chapelle, made walls almost entirely glass?
Rayonnant
Rayonnant comes from French rayonner, 'to radiate', after the radiating spokes of the style's great rose windows.
Q 16Louis IX built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to house which relic?
The Crown of Thorns
The Crown of Thorns was later moved to Notre-Dame, survived the 2019 fire, and was carried back into the restored cathedral.
Q 17Which English cathedral replaced its collapsed Norman tower with a lantern-topped Octagon?
Ely
Ely's Octagon hides timber vaulting painted to pass for stone, because a stone vault that wide was a structural impossibility.
Q 18Which late Gothic style, with straight vertical tracery and fan vaults, was found only in England?
Perpendicular
It first appeared around 1332 at Old St Paul's in London and had no equivalent even in Scotland or Ireland.
Q 19Which chapel, begun by Henry VI in 1446, has the world's largest fan vault?
King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge only finished its chapel in 1515, after the Wars of the Roses had interfered with the building.
Q 20Which English cathedral has the tallest spire in England?
Salisbury
Salisbury's spire only became England's tallest after two taller medieval spires elsewhere collapsed in the 16th century.
Q 24Which cathedral's north tower made it the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874?
Strasbourg
Strasbourg's famous north tower has no twin, because the planned south tower was never built, leaving the façade lopsided.
Q 25Which cathedral, begun in 1386, took nearly six centuries to finish, its last details completed in 1965?
Milan
Milan's builders called in master masons from as far as Paris, sparking an international debate over how to raise the cathedral.
Q 26Which is the world's largest Gothic cathedral?
Seville
Seville Cathedral's bell tower, the Giralda, began life as the minaret of the great mosque that once stood on the site.
Q 27What practical job does a gargoyle do?
Spouts rainwater away from the walls
Spouts rainwater away from the walls: many gargoyles split the runoff into thin streams, so no torrent erodes the mortar.
Q 28Rose windows are also known as 'Catherine windows' after which saint's instrument of martyrdom?
The spiked breaking wheel
The spiked breaking wheel meant to kill St Catherine shattered at her touch, legend says, and became the emblem that named the windows.
Q 29What is the earliest form of window tracery called?
Plate
Plate tracery gave way in the 13th century to bar tracery, whose thin stone bars let windows grow far larger.
Q 30What is a tall, narrow Gothic window with a sharp point at its top called?
Lancet
Lancet windows marked the earliest Gothic churches, until builders grouped several lights under bar tracery to make far bigger windows.