World Tour to Bourges Cathedral

World Tour Locations: One on the beautiful place to visit is Bourges Cathedral. It is a Roman Catholic cathedral, dedicated to Saint Stephen, located in Bourges, France. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Bourges. The cathedral's nave is 15 m wide by 37m high; its arcade is 20m high; the inner aisle is 21.3 m and the outer aisle is 9.3 m high. The use of flying buttresses was employed to help the structure of the building. However, since this was a fairly new technique, one can easily see the walls were still made quite thick to take the force. Sexpartite vaults are used to span the nave.

Bourges Cathedral is notable for the simplicity of its plan, which did without transepts but which adopted the double-aisled design found in earlier high-status churches such as the Early-Christian basilica of St Peter's in Rome or in Notre Dame de Paris. The double aisles continue without interruption beyond the position of the screen to form a double ambulatory around the choir. The inner aisle has a higher vault than the outer one, while both the central nave and the inner aisle have similar three-part elevations with arcade, triforium and clerestory windows; a design which admits considerably more light than one finds in more conventional double-aisled buildings like Notre-Dame. This design, with its distinctive triangular cross section, was subsequently copied at Toledo Cathedral and in the choir at Le Mans. The flying buttresses surrounding the cathedral are relatively slender and efficient, particularly compared to the contemporary but much heavier flyers at Chartres. Their steep angle helps to channel the thrust from the nave vaults and the wind loading on the roof to the outer buttress piers more effectively.

The west facade is on a particularly grand scale when compared to earlier cathedrals. The four side aisles and central nave each have their own portal reflecting the scale of the spaces beyond. As is often the case with Gothic churches, the central portal carries sculpted scenes related to the Last Judgment, whilst the south portals are dedicated to the lives of saints - here St Ursinus and St Stephen. The north portals were destroyed when the tower collapsed but surviving fragments indicate that their sculptural programmers were dedicated to the life and death of the Virgin. Unifying all five portals is a dado screen of gabled niches which stretches the whole width of the facade. The spandrels between these niches feature an extended Genesis cycle which would originally have told the story from the beginning of Creation to God's Covenant with Noah.

Romanesque carved portals from about 1160-70, probably intended for the facade of the earlier cathedral, have been reused on the south and north doors (occupying the spaces normally reserved for transept portals). Their profuse ornamentation is reminiscent of Burundian work. Apart from the axial chapel, Bourges Cathedral retains most of its original ambulatory glass, which dates from about 1215. The glazing program includes a famous Typological window several hagiographic cycles, the story of the Old Testament patriarch, Joseph and symbolic depictions of the Apocalypse and Last Judgment. Other windows show the Passion and three of Christ's parables; the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son and the story of Dives and Lazarus. The French art historian Louis Grodecki identified three distinct masters or workshops involved in the glazing, one of whom may also have worked on the windows of Poitiers Cathedral.

All of us need to reward ourselves over a time for the stress toll taken both physically and mentally by us. One of the best ways to chill out is to take a vacation and here are some amazing worldwide vacation rentals you can consider booking for your vacations.