My wife and I believe that, along with Chartres, Laon Cathedral is one of the most beautiful in France. We stopped there several times. Was it its silhouette perched atop a hill, visible from afar? Was it the oxen carved into the towers? The elegant soaring of the central nave? The atmosphere of relative abandonment of the town? Or the way you have to walk up its main street to discover it? Perhaps a little of all of that...

As I am the first WHS member to write on the subject, a brief historical overview is in order The construction of Notre Dame Cathedral in Laon began around 1160 AD and was completed around the first quarter of the 13th century. We are in the early Gothic period; it would be the second Gothic cathedral built in France after the choir of Saint-Denis north of Paris.

The sculptures that adorn it were reworked in the 19th century because they had been badly damaged during the French Revolution. I also remember photos of the cathedral at the end of the First World War, taken from a side aisle. It apparently wasn't as heavily bombed as Reims or Soissons Cathedrals...

The cathedral was built all at once. This probably explains its perfect homogeneity and harmony. The 6 towers, including a lantern tower above the crossing of the transept and the nave, are said to have been built by the architect Villard de Honnecourt, a Picard who kept a sketchbook with him during …