Home Architecture Talk

did the goths really invent the gothic architecture or was it someone else?

im not sure.... if the goths were the ones who came up with this architecture or if it was someone else

Public Comments

1. The term "Gothic", when applied to architecture, has nothing to do with the historical Goths. It was a pejorative term that came to be used as early as the 1530s by Giorgio Vasari to describe culture that was considered rude and barbaric. At the time in which Vasari was writing, Italy had experienced a century of building in the Classical architectural vocabulary revived in the Renaissance and seen as the finite evidence of a new Golden Age of learning and refinement.
2. Gothic arch was invented in a central France and from there this style spread out to the rest of Europe. As the poster prior me mentioned, the term Gothic was applied by Vasari to describe a style in Italy that came the North of the Alps once inhibited by Goths. However the time frame between last kingdom of Goths in France and the origin of the Gothic style is about 600 years; therefore, the Goths were not inventor of this style. In Central Europe this style was revolutionary and often early writers at the 13th century mentions this style as Burgundian since many gothic builders came from there, and was spread out of through new christian orders (Premonsterians and Cistercians).