NOTRE DAME DE PARIS

as was the Norman tradition—but trebled, that is much slimmer,
openings in the slightly later nave, and the separating colonnettes are
exceedingly slender.

Still more daring than the elevation of Notre Dame is its ground
plan (fig. 28). Already at Sens and Noyon a slightly centralising tend-
ency can be noted: at Sens by a lengthening of the chancel between
transept and ambulatory, at Noyon by semicircular endings of the
transepts to the north and south. Now in Paris the architect has
placed his transept almost exactly half-way between the two west
towers and the east end. He has adopted the most ambitious plan

28. PARIS: NOTRE DAME, BEGUN c. 1163. TOP HALF—GROUND-FLOOR; LOWER HALF—
UPPER FLOOR. THE CHAPELS BETWEEN THE BUTTRESSES OF THE NAVE WERE BEGUN C. 1235,
AROUND THE EAST END IN 1296.
for nave and chancel, the one with double aisles, familiar from Old
St. Peter's in Rome as well as from Cluny. His transepts project
very little beyond the outer aisles, and there were originally no radiat-
ing chapels at all. The present ones, as well as the present chapels
between the buttresses of nave and chancel, are a later addition.
The resulting spatial rhythm is much smoother than that of Roman-
esque cathedrals or of Noyon. It is no longer split into numerous
units which one has to add up mentally, as it were, to summarise
the spatial totality, but concentrated in a few, in fact three, sections:
west, centre, east. The transept acts as the centre of the balance.
The facade and the double ambulatory round the apse are the two
scales. Within this rhythm the evenness of the narrowly spaced
arcade columns is most important. It leads you on towards the
altar as forcibly as did the columns of Early Christian basilicas.
The movement which had grown from St. Denis to Noyon and
from Noyon to Paris reached maturity in the cathedrals designed