Pointed arch

• 1. Introduction

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  The pointed arch appears in the ruins of Nippur, a Bronze Age city, in forms dated earlier than 2700 BC. Long before any Gothic cathedral stood, builders in ancient Mesopotamia shaped two curving sides to meet at a sharp point at the crown. This geometry turned out to carry loads and reach heights that the older round arch could not match. Its form derives from the intersection of two circles, a relationship that made it both precise and reproducible. What gave this shape its structural power? And how did it travel from ancient Mesopotamia to France and England, where it would change the shape of cities?

• 2. Ancient Roots

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  The palace of Nineveh contains pointed arched drains, yet they have no true keystone. A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone at the crown of an arch that locks the other stones in place. Without it, the Nineveh drains are pointed in shape but incomplete as structural arches. The more technically significant early example is the Byzantine Karamagara Bridge, with a pointed arch spanning 17 meters. Its scale has been cited as making the pre-Muslim origins of pointed architecture "an unassailable contention."

  Two pointed arches of the Chytroi-Constantia Aqueduct in Cyprus, dating to the 7th century CE, stand as the clearest surviving pre-Islamic examples. Scholar Charles Anthony Stewart has argued that pointed arches and flying buttresses in Early Byzantine Cyprus represent Byzantine architectural innovations, not later Gothic influence. John Warren examined earlier scholarship by Creswell on Islamic buildings. He found Byzantine precedents at Sant'Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna and at Hagia Irene in Constantinople. Those findings placed the pointed form firmly within Roman-Byzantine practice before Islam emerged as a political and architectural force.

  The late 7th century brought a new political order across the Middle East. With it came an architectural tradition that would carry the pointed arch into its most elaborate early development.

• 3. Sharpening the Form

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  Qusayr 'Amra, built in 712-715 AD, is an early Islamic building where the proportions of the pointed arch can be precisely traced. One measurable quality of the arch is the distance between the centers of the two circles forming its curving sides. The wider that distance, the sharper and less blunt the arch becomes. At Qusayr 'Amra, this distance was relatively small. At Hammam as-Sarah, built in 725-730, the arch had grown sharper. Qasr Al-Mshatta, built in 744, pushed it further still. By the time builders reached Fustat in 861-862, the arch had reached its most acute form.

  The Abbasid caliphs at Samarra took the pointed arch in a different direction. They developed the four-centred arch, the most technically advanced pointed form in Islamic architectural practice. The portals of the Qubbat al-Sulaiybiyya, an octagonal pavilion at Samarra, display this form. The Qasr al-'Ashiq palace, also at Samarra, was built by the Abbasid caliphs in the 9th century for their new capital and shows the same type. A four-centred arch is low and wide. Its two sides rise steeply from the base on a small radius. They then flatten into a broad, low curve that meets at a pointed apex.

  From the Abbasid heartland, the pointed arch spread into Fatimid architecture in Egypt. It became characteristic of Persian architecture, the architecture of the Timurid Empire, and the Indo-Islamic tradition.

  The form had crossed into western European hands, where builders would discover structural properties that transformed the scale of everything they attempted.

• 4. The Rib Vault

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  In the 12th century, architects in Sicily, England, and France found a new use for the pointed arch. They discovered that it could reduce the outward thrust on supports compared to a semicircular arch carrying the same load. Pointed arches also allowed spans of different widths to rise to the same height. Medieval builders learned this at first through experimentation. Technical literature from the Renaissance suggests that formulas for calculating thrust may have been in use during the medieval period.

  One of the first Gothic rib vaults was built at Durham Cathedral in England, with construction spanning 1135-1490. The deambulatory of the Abbey of Saint Denis in Paris followed, completed in 1140-1144. Lessay Abbey in Normandy, dated 1064-1178, added another early example. Cefalù Cathedral in Sicily, dated 1131-1240, and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris completed the first generation of Gothic rib-vaulted buildings.

  In the older Romanesque barrel vault, the round arch over the nave pressed directly down onto the walls. Those walls had to be extremely thick and could have only small windows. In the rib vault, thin stone ribs distributed weight outward and downward to the pillars below. Walls could now be thinner, taller, and pierced by large windows. With flying buttresses added outside the building, columns arched away from the exterior to carry the outward thrust. Cathedrals could now reach heights that the Romanesque style had never approached, and their walls could be filled with stained glass.

  The earliest type of Gothic rib vault, called the sexpartite, divided the ceiling into six compartments with a transversal pointed arch. It required alternating columns and pillars and could cover only a limited span. Sens Cathedral and Notre-Dame de Paris both used this type. A later version reduced the compartments from six to four. This quadripartite vault distributed weight equally to four pillars, eliminated the need for alternating supports, and allowed the vault to span a wider space. Amiens Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, and Reims Cathedral all used the quadripartite design and rose to heights no earlier building had reached.

  Gothic cathedral portals were typically shaped as pointed arches surrounded by sculpture, often symbolizing the entrance to heaven. The windows above them came in several distinct geometric forms that medieval craftsmen refined across the centuries.

• 5. Forms and Varieties

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  Stone cutters building Gothic churches could draw the equilateral arch's arc on a block of stone with a cord and a marker. The equilateral arch is based on an equilateral triangle whose three sides are all equal. This means the span of the arch equals the arc radii. This made it the most common form of Gothic pointed arch, and it could be reproduced in large quantities across a building site. Arch stones were cut at the quarry in bulk and delivered with confidence that they would fit together correctly.

  Medieval theologians gave this practical geometry a sacred meaning. The three equal sides of the equilateral triangle were said to represent the Holy Trinity.

  A lancet window takes its name from the lance and is recognizable by its tall, slender proportions and pointed arch. These windows were often grouped in sets of two, three, or four placed side by side. In the later Flamboyant Gothic, windows with pointed arches expanded to fill nearly the entire wall surface. Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes, built in 1379-1480, exemplifies this extreme.

  The Tudor arch is a variation of the Islamic four-centred arch. It was widely used in English architecture during the Tudor dynasty (1485-1603). It is flatter than the related Persian arch, which is moderately depressed. Both types rise steeply from the springing points on a small radius. They then turn into a broad, low curve before meeting at a pointed apex.

  Some late Flamboyant windows incorporated a modification of the horseshoe arch, borrowed from Islamic architecture. Even at its most elaborate, the Gothic pointed arch continued drawing on traditions far outside western Europe.

• 6. The Gothic Revival

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  Horace Walpole (1717-1797) began building Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, London from 1749 onward. The pointed arch gave the house its overtly Gothic appearance. The Renaissance had largely set Gothic forms aside in favor of classical ones, but Walpole's project marked one of the first deliberate returns.

  Churches and chapels were the most common settings for the revived style. The British Houses of Parliament in London were rebuilt in 1840-1876 after fire destroyed the earlier building. They became a landmark of Gothic Revival in civic architecture.

  At Peterhof in Russia, a Gothic train station completed in 1857 brought the pointed arch to a railway platform. The form had found its way into a building type no medieval builder could have named.