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50 free Gothic Architecture trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is regarded as the defining design element of Gothic architecture?
The pointed arch
Its use led in turn to the pointed rib vault and new ways of bracing the walls from outside.
Q 02Gothic architecture was supplanted from the mid-15th century by which style, born in Italy?
Renaissance
Gothic itself had evolved from Romanesque, and lingered on in England and Belgium into the 16th century.
Q 03In which region did Gothic architecture originate?
Northern France
It spread from there across Latin Europe during the 13th century.
Q 04What did medieval builders themselves call the style, in Latin?
Opus Francigenum
It was also called opus modernum ('modern work') or novum opus ('new work'); Italians said maniera tedesca, 'German style'.
Q 05Which writer popularised the sneering label 'Gothic' in his 1550 Lives of the Artists?
Giorgio Vasari
He blamed the Goths, who had sacked Rome, for the 'barbarous German style'.
Q 06Christopher Wren argued the pointed manner should be named after which people, its inventors?
The Saracens
He mentioned Europe's debt to the Saracens twelve times in his writings, and refused to put a Gothic roof on St Paul's.
Q 07The choir of which abbey near Paris, rebuilt in 1140-44, is considered the first fully Gothic building?
Saint-Denis
It was the royal funerary abbey of the French kings, and its rebuilt choir first combined rib vaults, buttresses and pointed arches systematically.
Q 08Which abbot, adviser to Louis VI and VII, drove the rebuilding of the royal abbey near Paris?
Suger
He also installed a circular rose window over the portal, a feature that became standard.
Q 09Which external arched structure let Gothic walls become thinner and windows larger?
The flying buttress
The builders of Notre-Dame de Paris were among the first to use them.
Q 10Which English cathedral, begun in 1093, was the first to use a rib vault?
Durham
Its nave was vaulted between 1093 and 1104, before the French had put the pieces together.
Q 11Which was the first cathedral built entirely in the new Gothic style, consecrated in 1160?
Sens
Its master builder later crossed the Channel to rebuild the choir of Canterbury.
Q 12Whose rebuilt choir at Canterbury, begun after a 1174 fire, is considered the first Early English Gothic work?
William of Sens
He fell from the scaffolding in 1178 and was replaced by William the Englishman.
Q 13Which cathedral, rebuilt after a 1194 fire, is regarded as the first High Gothic building?
Chartres
Its windows tell the story of the Virgin, with the donor guilds' crafts illustrated in a corner of each.
Q 21Which chapel, begun by Henry VI in 1446, has the world's largest fan vault?
King's College, Cambridge
Henry laid the first stone himself on 25 July 1446.
Q 22Which English cathedral boasts the tallest spire in England, at 123 metres?
Salisbury
It only became England's tallest after two rival spires collapsed in the 16th century.
Q 23Which German cathedral, begun in 1248 and finished in 1880, is the world's tallest twin-spired church?
Cologne
Work stopped around 1560 and resumed only when the original design drawings were rediscovered.
Q 14Which cathedral has the world's highest Gothic choir and partly collapsed in the 13th century?
Beauvais
After the collapse nobody tried to build higher, and its nave was never constructed at all.
Q 15Which French cathedral, with 2,300 façade statues, was the traditional coronation church of French kings?
Reims
Clovis was baptised there and Louis the Pious was crowned there in 816.
Q 16Which cathedral, built almost entirely between 1220 and 1270, is the largest in France by volume?
Amiens
Its 200,000 cubic metres are more than double Notre-Dame de Paris; it also claims the head of John the Baptist.
Q 17Which style, exemplified by the Sainte-Chapelle, made walls almost entirely glass?
Rayonnant
The name comes from the radiating spokes of the great rose windows.
Q 18Louis IX built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to house which relic?
The Crown of Thorns
Consecrated in 1248, it holds one of the world's greatest collections of 13th-century stained glass.
Q 19The late French Gothic style named for its flame-like tracery is called what?
Flamboyant
It multiplied the decorative vault ribs and favoured the arch in accolade.
Q 20Which 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 24The great Rhineland cathedral begun in 1248 was planned as a grand home for the reliquary of whom?
The Three Kings
It was also meant as a fitting place of worship for the Holy Roman Emperor.
Q 25Which German church, whose steeple reaches 161.5 m, is the second-tallest church building in the world?
Ulm Minster
Its enormous tower was designed by Ulrich von Ensingen from 1377 but only finished in 1890.
Q 26Which cathedral's north tower made it the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874?
Strasbourg
At 142 metres it remains the tallest structure built entirely in the Middle Ages.
Q 27Which cathedral, begun in 1386, took nearly six centuries to finish, its last details completed in 1965?
Milan
It is the only Italian cathedral that fully followed the canons of French Gothic, and the largest church in the Italian Republic.
Q 28Which is the world's largest Gothic cathedral, which displaced Hagia Sophia as the biggest anywhere?
Seville
Its Giralda tower, a converted minaret, rises 104.5 m to the weather vane.
Q 29What practical job does a gargoyle do?
Spouts rainwater away from the walls
Many small spouts split the flow into thin streams so it does not erode the mortar.
Q 30Rose windows are also known as 'Catherine windows' after which saint's instrument of martyrdom?
The spiked breaking wheel
Simpler versions with radiating spokes are called wheel windows.