The soaring choir at Beauvais Cathedral was first constructed in the 1200s. Nick Servian/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis Up until recently, architects credited stonemasons for developing ...

Paradoxically, a fire gave a new impulse to the project, the choir was finished in 1269 and the whole thing was ... since in 1284 the dome of the neighbouring Beauvais Cathedral had collapsed from a ...