HS1 3 4 Gothic Secular Architecture
Summary
TLDRThe video explores the evolution of medieval architecture, focusing on the contrast between ecclesiastical and secular buildings. It highlights the fortified nature of cities and castles, reflecting the insecurity of the time, with walled cities and narrow streets providing safety for inhabitants. The architectural styles of castles and homes varied across Europe, from stone-built fortresses to simpler timber houses. As security improved, architecture became more decorative, with influences from church design. The video also touches on the rise of town halls and guilds, indicating a shift in power from the church to civic authorities.
Takeaways
- 🏰 Fortified cities and castles were common in medieval Europe, with people living within walls for safety due to lack of central governments.
- 💰 Most wealth and focus during this period were centered on ecclesiastical architecture, leaving secular architecture less explored.
- 🌆 Walled cities provided security from attacks, with shops, homes, and offices inside, and narrow streets with low buildings.
- 🏡 Domestic architecture had functional designs, with the ground floor often used for commerce, such as shoemakers or bakers running shops.
- 🛡 Castles functioned as fortified homes, with strong lower walls, minimal windows, and defensive features like crenellations and turrets.
- 🔥 Great Halls in castles served multiple purposes, from public gatherings to serving as courts and even sleeping areas, with central fires for heating.
- 🎨 Over time, domestic buildings incorporated more Gothic architectural elements, blending church styles with residential designs, including lancet windows and wooden interiors.
- 🔨 The invention of the fireplace allowed for more advanced interior spaces, like the ‘solar,’ with wooden floors and paneled walls for warmth.
- 🎶 Great Halls often featured minstrel galleries, where musicians could play during events, reflecting a blend of utility and grandeur in design.
- 🕌 Venice developed its own unique Gothic style, influenced by Eastern trade, with ornate, lace-like facades and a focus on horizontal, decorative bands.
Q & A
What are the key differences between ecclesiastic and secular architecture during the period discussed?
-Ecclesiastic architecture focused on religious buildings like churches, while secular or domestic architecture pertained to fortified cities, castles, and homes. Ecclesiastic structures were more developed as most wealth and focus were directed toward them, whereas secular architecture remained simpler and utilitarian.
Why were walled cities common during this period?
-Walled cities were common because people felt unsafe due to the lack of central government and security. Living within city walls offered protection from attacks and marauding bands, while those outside the walls were more vulnerable.
What architectural elements defined fortified cities and castles during this time?
-Fortified cities and castles were characterized by strong, thick walls, often with crenellations and turrets. Castles were like smaller, fortified cities with services inside to survive a siege. Lower stories had no windows, while upper stories had small windows to monitor for attacks.
How did the architecture of castles evolve as people started feeling more secure?
-As people felt more secure, castles became less fortress-like and more palatial, with more windows and elements of Gothic style. The focus shifted from defense to comfort and aesthetic appeal.
What was the significance of the Great Hall in castles and palaces?
-The Great Hall was the central room used for various purposes, including meetings, entertaining, and court proceedings. It had a high ceiling, simple furniture, and a central fire for heating. It was also a sleeping area for servants and guests.
What were some of the developments in interior architecture during this period?
-Interior architecture saw developments such as the solar, a more intimate room for private meetings, and fireplaces that allowed for better heating without open fires. This led to more comfortable spaces with wooden floors, paneled walls, and flat ceilings.
What style of homes did less wealthy individuals live in during this period?
-Less wealthy individuals lived in smaller homes, often made with local materials and thatched roofs. Timber-framed houses with wattle and daub construction were common, with simple designs and roofs made of straw for insulation.
How did the Gothic architectural style manifest in Venice?
-In Venice, Gothic architecture combined with Eastern influences due to the city's position as a trade hub. Venetian Gothic architecture featured lace-like facades with open stonework and horizontal bands, giving buildings a decorative, ornamental appearance.
What role did the Doge’s Palace play in Venetian Gothic architecture?
-The Doge’s Palace in Venice is a prime example of Venetian Gothic architecture, with its facade featuring gothic arches and an ornate, lace-like design. It demonstrates Venice’s focus on ornamental architecture and facade decoration.
How did the architecture of Siena reflect its local context?
-Siena’s architecture, characterized by terracotta roofs and brick, reflects the local materials available. The city's walled structure and central town hall show the growing importance of civic organizations and guilds, which were starting to compete with the church's influence.
Outlines
🏰 Fortified Cities and Medieval Architecture
During the Middle Ages, cities and architecture were heavily influenced by the lack of central governance and constant threats from outsiders. Walled cities and castles became essential for protection, reflecting the people's insecurity. The architecture of these cities featured narrow streets, low-rise buildings (often two to three stories), and simple facades. Ground floors were commonly used for commercial purposes. Castles were smaller, fortified cities with minimal windows and crenellations for defense. French castles often had conical roofs, while English ones were characterized by flat, crenellated towers. As security improved, buildings incorporated more windows and began to resemble homes rather than fortresses.
🏛️ Combining Church and Domestic Architecture
Buildings during this period started to blend ecclesiastical and domestic architectural styles. For example, the small castle at Stoke Say in England featured a Great Hall for social gatherings, meetings, and even local court sessions. This hall was simple, with high ceilings and stone floors, heated by a central fire. As homes evolved, more intimate rooms like the solar were introduced, offering greater warmth and comfort with wooden floors, paneled walls, and fireplaces. Windows began to reflect church architecture, such as Lancet windows, creating a fusion of sacred and domestic elements.
🏡 Great Halls and Evolving Domestic Structures
Great Halls remained central to medieval homes, serving multiple purposes like meetings, meals, and social gatherings. They were furnished with movable, simple pieces to create versatile spaces. In more affluent homes, elaborate wooden screens, minstrel porches, and Gothic-inspired paneling added sophistication. A notable example, Hayden Hall, showcased Gothic motifs in its architecture, including pointed arches and trefoil carvings. Trestle tables could be moved to transform the space, highlighting the multifunctional nature of these rooms. Over time, houses evolved from timber structures to more complex designs incorporating local materials like thatch and half-timbering.
🏘️ The Development of Italian City Architecture
As political stability increased, architecture in cities like Siena, Italy, shifted from purely defensive to more civic and decorative forms. Siena’s architecture featured terracotta materials, with a cohesive aesthetic defined by red brick and tiled roofs. The town hall, or Piazza Público, symbolized the growing influence of civic governance over the church. Decorative elements such as pointed arches and crenellations, though now mostly ornamental, still referenced earlier defensive styles. Inside, the city’s murals depicted prosperity and the benefits of good governance, reflecting the evolving role of urban centers in the late Gothic period.
🎭 Venetian Gothic: Merging East and West
Venetian architecture during the Gothic period was heavily influenced by the city's role as a trade hub between Europe and the East. This blend of influences is evident in buildings like the Doge’s Palace, where intricate Gothic arches and stone tracery create a lace-like effect on facades. Venice’s architectural style focused on decorative exteriors, using horizontal bands of ornamentation and open stonework. Smaller Venetian buildings followed this pattern, emphasizing elaborate, ornamental facades that transformed their appearance into intricate works of art, symbolizing the unique cultural blend of Venice during this era.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Ecclesiastic Architecture
💡Secular Architecture
💡Walled Cities
💡Castles
💡Great Hall
💡Crenellations
💡Lancet Windows
💡Half-Timbered Structures
💡Guilds
💡Doge's Palace
Highlights
Ecclesiastic architecture dominated early cityscapes, while secular architecture and domestic spaces were less explored.
Walled cities reflected the unsafe conditions of the period, with residents seeking protection within fortified walls.
Fortified cities and castles functioned as both homes and protective spaces, with little focus on luxury or complex architecture.
Castle design included features like crenellations, turrets, and thick walls for defense, and simple, cold interior spaces.
Castles in France were known for their conical-roofed turrets, while those in England had flat-topped crenellations.
As people felt more secure, buildings transitioned from fortresses to more comfortable country homes and palaces.
The Great Hall was central to medieval domestic buildings, serving as a meeting space, entertainment venue, and sleeping area.
The development of fireplaces enabled more complex interiors with wooden paneling and cozier designs, like the solar room.
Trestle tables in Great Halls allowed for flexible room use, where tables could be easily moved for gatherings.
In more modest homes, half-timbered (wattle and daub) construction and thatched roofs were common, providing insulation.
In Siena, terracotta-colored brick created a unified architectural aesthetic, with walled cities developing commercial centers.
Venetian Gothic architecture blended Eastern and European influences, creating unique, ornate facades like the Doge's Palace.
Venetian buildings utilized horizontal bands and open stonework, integrating gothic arches into highly decorative designs.
As medieval cities grew, civic institutions like guilds and town halls became more prominent, reducing the Church's dominance.
The Great Hall's design in both England and Italy often featured timbered roofs, large windows, and Gothic-style details.
The rise of guilds and civic organizations reflected the increasing strength of public institutions separate from the Church.
Transcripts
so in a point in time when there was
just so
ecclesiastic architecture we really need
to kind of make a definition between
that and secular architecture or
domestic architecture and basically the
way that cities look so commercial and
domestic this is a time when there
really isn't all that much going on kind
of broadly speaking what we do have is
the building up of fortified cities and
often castle castles or castle like
palaces the architecture isn't explored
all that fully because most of the
wealth and most of the focus is on
what's happening in the churches but
what we do find are walled cities and
walled cities really reflect the
lifestyle of people during this period
and that's that they were felt pretty
unsafe in the world because there
weren't central forms of government that
were far-reaching at all and because
there wasn't a sense of security people
wanted to live inside of the walls of
the city they would have to pay quite a
lot of tax and there were often all
kinds of regulations as to who could
live there but it meant that if the
region was attacked they'd have a lot
more opportunity to survive people who
lived outside the walls of the city were
open to kind of marauding bands of
villagers and certainly they were the
first to get hit when that particular
town was attacked by by outsiders but of
course farmers needed to do that and
during times of siege everybody would
move into the walled part of the city
and many of these cities looked like
this this one happens to be one that
survived in France the city of
Carcassonne eh but this isn't too
dissimilar to cities all over Europe we
have a palace we have a church and then
we have lots of smaller buildings that
would have held shops offices and of
course people's homes the streets would
have been narrow as this one is and the
buildings relatively low two to three
stories high and actually haven't
changed much over time so we have these
very kind of plain facades rather simple
buildings the ground floor
taken over for sort of public use so if
the family that lived there were
shoemakers the ground floor would have
had their shop or maybe a bakery
all of the kind of needs of everyday
life were met through the shops that
were inside of these walled cities and
we can see how that kind of architecture
has a few different kinds of variations
to it
we have facades that are relatively flat
with small windows at the base some have
arched windows at the base as we can see
here very often the upper storeys kind
of overhung the street in order to get
just a few more inches of interior space
but it also provided kind of covered
walkways for people when they were
walking through the streets castles
really are just smaller fortified cities
they also would have a lot of services
contained within their walls so that
they could really kind of close
themselves off from the world in order
to be able to survive a siege the lower
storeys wouldn't have any windows at all
and the upper storeys would have windows
primarily to be able to look out and
make sure the bad stuff wasn't on its
way and when it was a way to kind of you
know battle that bad stuff and we see
very often crenellations as well which
allowed people to fight and the whole
thing was about protecting oneself in
France
the castles tend to have these kind of
turrets on them with these conical roofs
and you can see here on two different
examples of that and you can see just
how strong the lower walls were the
interior spaces would have been rather
simple and rather cold by our standards
everything being made out of stone when
possible because if you had anything
wood it had the opportunity to be lit a
fire when when the building was under
siege in England we don't see the
conical towers instead we see we see
towers with crenellations alone so they
have this kind of flat cutoff quality
and you can see here in both of these
buildings elements of that Gothic style
that we saw developing in the churches
and trained into the styles
of the building so as people start to
feel more secure they add more windows
to these buildings they become less and
less like fortresses and more and more
like country homes and palaces here in
the small castle of Stoke say in England
you can see how church architecture is
combining with domestic architecture we
have a building that sort of looks
almost like a basilica from the outside
but it's got kind of an odd combination
both are kind of crenelated Tower at one
end and then this half-timbered
structure at the other raised high
enough above to still be quite secure in
the sides of the building we have
windows that would seem quite
appropriate in church their Lancet
windows with a rondelle at the top and
when we enter the building what we find
is that the majority of that central
space is taken over by a Great Hall the
Great Hall would have been the central
room for any kind of important domestic
building either a palace or a castle
like this and this would be where almost
everything took place the furniture
would be quite simple the roof quite
high and that's in part due to the fact
that the fire to heat this space and
light it at night would have been
located centrally and it would have been
an open fire so essentially the middle
of the room would have been your
fireplace and all the smoke would go up
into the rafters this space would have
been used as well for entertaining for
important local meetings very often
because there wasn't any kind of really
strong local landed gentry would
function as kind of the court as well so
when anything took place within their
lands they were the ones that would set
judgment on that so people would come
here for hearings you know to make
complaints whatever and all of that
would take place in this room and then
at night very often people of the house
would also sleep there so the servants
might sleep their guests might sleep
there depending on how many other rooms
were available in the building
in this particular building and stok
safe we have a room called a solar which
is sort of the development of more
complex interiors this is a room set
aside from the Great Hall that would be
for more intimate meetings and you can
see in this room some of the the
developments of interior architecture in
England so we move from a room that's
this great open space with a soaring
ceiling stone floors and to plain
whitewashed walls that might have been
hung with tapestries originally to kind
of warm the space up to a room where
we've got wooden floors this is raised
above the ground floor level and the
walls are paneled and wood really
creating much more warmth much more cozy
kind of space and the ceiling is flat
one of the reasons that we can do this
now is because the fireplace is
developed and the fireplace allows for
heating in a space like this without
having to have the smoke leave through
the ceiling the other thing we see here
are the Landsat windows and we see this
alcove built in with seating in it for
reading or kind of close work like
embroidery to be done right in the
window opening itself we're looking at a
view of Hayden Hall here no Hayden Hall
is a structure that is built on to
overtime so not everything that we're
looking at here is from the medieval
period but I want you to take note of
the crenellations and the way that the
windows are I'm kind of these broad RAL
windows or bay windows I'm set into the
building the portion of the building
that's oldest also incorporates a Great
Hall and and it hayden we've got a
really complete Great Hall which is
wonderful it has again that very high
timbered ceiling and you can see it's
it's open it has a stone floor that
again would have had a central fire fire
going and it's not an even in a pit it's
just a laid right out there in the
middle of the floor and then it has this
screen at one end which allows for the
room to be closed off from the entryways
where food would have been brought in
and people guests would have
arrived and exited and you can see that
the screen is paneled and within that
paneling we see motifs that are very
similar to the forms that we see in
Gothic architecture so very often the
panels will have a pointed arch or
trefoils or quatrefoil carved into them
above that we have what's called the
minstrels porch or an area that would
have been used for circulation in the
upper storeys of the building but also
would have been a great place for the
orchestra to sit or the musicians to sit
during festivals these rooms would have
been furnished very simply in furniture
that could be moved easily I'm in there
lit by these large windows on either
side of the room very much like
ecclesiastic architecture of this time
with this kind of opening up of the
walls and this also has to do with a
sense of security either within a kind
of fortress like structure or out in the
land now that things are getting a
little bit more settled at Pennhurst
place 13th to 14th century we see again
windows with the kind of tracery that we
see in church architecture and that's
that kind of cut out stonework that
creates a sort of lace like quality on
the exterior of the building it helps to
support the windows and it also creates
more visual interest we see kinds of
short hours with crenellations and when
we enter the space of the Great Hall we
see again another really wonderfully
complete Great Hall this also has the
screen and the minstrel porch it has a
painting where a tapestry would have
originally hung and of course there
could have been tapestries all around
the building the roof is a complex one
but again very high and made of wood and
you can see lots of light coming in to
the space through through these great
lengths at windows and then we see
furniture in this space that really
represents quite nicely what kind of
furnishing might have been in a room
like this these tables are trestle
tables it means that you can take the
top off lean it against the wall and
move the base and collapse it as
well so that the room could be
completely empty for gatherings that
required them maybe dancing or a large
meeting of people in the region and then
at one end you would have had a Dias
where there would have been a
throne-like chair and it would have also
been the place where the owner of the
house would have dined along with any
important guests for people who weren't
quite so wealthy there were um Tim
birdhouses and for people who were even
less wealthy there were very small
houses often made of local materials
with thatched roofs and we can see a
thatched roof on both of these
structures as well thatching is a kind
of process of taking straw and weaving
it together into these very very thick
roofs that help to repel water and
actually insulate the homes really well
now Tim brain sometimes referred to as
half Tim brain or wattle and daub is
actually a process whereby the structure
of the house is worked out in wood and
pieces of wood and then all of the space
in between is filled in with rubble or
stone or whatever happens to be at hand
and then all of that is plastered over
and the wood elements are left visible
and covered with some kind of preserving
material I'm something similar to tar is
used in order to keep the wood from
aging and that's why it's so much darker
than the white plaster this could become
quite complex and very decorative
sometimes it's done simply as in the
smaller home on the left hand side and
sometimes it becomes a part of the
aesthetic of the building as we see on
the right hand side and this style
continues and develops right into the
Jacobean period which is the early
Renaissance in England
moving on to Italy we're going to take a
look at Siena another walled city this
one again very well preserved you can
see that the material of choice in this
area is terracotta so we've got
terracotta roofs and we've got Terra
cotta colored brick so the city has a
kind of architectural continuity just in
the fact that it's all the same kind of
rich red color in the center of the city
is a town hall so this isn't a church
this is a town hall which in itself is
rather extraordinary what we're seeing
during the course of the Middle Ages is
that by the time we get into the late
gothic we have a population that's
developing its own organizations that's
actually becoming kind of almost a
competition with the church in that it's
creating guilds that are that are
gaining strength and making decisions
about the way that public policy will be
carried out and that the church in
essence is losing some of its power so
this is the Piazza público and on the
exterior it has this tall bell tower and
has crenellations although it really
wasn't there for the purpose of
protecting the building it becomes part
of the style of the architecture on the
exterior we also have the pointed arches
we have Landsat windows and when we get
inside we have a mural on one of the
main rooms that's really I'm quite
wonderful it tells the story of what
happens with a well governed city and
here we have a close-up of this kind of
happy city I'm really reflecting a lot
of the elements of Siena we see that
Commerce is actually developed that
there's ease of interaction between
people that there's a kind of wealth
that comes with governing the city well
but the other thing that's interesting
about this interior is the way that it's
set up
aesthetically so we have a flat roof we
have a kind of interest in the way that
the beams are being used and what we
find in the late gothic and this moves
then into the early Renaissance is an
interest in creating ceilings that are
quite beautiful I'm so often will have
corbels which are these kind of supports
at the ends of the beams and these
corbels will be very intricately
or richly painted we have walls that are
divided into three bands with a dado a
central portion and a frieze at the top
and so we see this kind of organization
coming about to the way that interiors
are treated and again this will also
carry on into the Renaissance
now the Gothic has its own development
in Venice just as the Byzantine does and
Venice is a very interesting and very
kind of specific place for Italy because
of its kind of places across roads it's
really so enriched by its trade with the
East but also very much influenced by
what's happening in Europe and so we see
this kind of coming together of Gothic
with some of the Eastern traditions and
we also see the fact that everything is
built on the water affecting the
architecture as well and what we're
looking at here is the Doge's Palace you
can see how the facade of the building
incorporates a series of gothic arches
to create this arcade but in a very
Venetian way this becomes more than just
an arcade and actually becomes almost
like a lace like covering on the
building the Venetians are really genius
with ornament and so the facade of the
building almost becomes like a palette
it's all about horizontal bands and then
the piercing of those horizontal bands
with these kind of lace like windows
looking at two smaller buildings in
Venice you can see how this concept of
horizontal bands of open stone work in
these gothic arches is used on other
buildings as well in Venice again always
giving this kind of sense of very much
being about the facade of the building
like a like a covering
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