Gothic or Gothic Revival? How to Recognise Neo-Gothic Architecture

Gothic Revival (or neo-Gothic) is the 19th-century revival of medieval Gothic, at its height from about 1830 to 1900. Its hallmark is that everything is regular and complete: uniform, often machine-cut decoration, straight joints, industrial brick, cast iron and large panes of glass, and frequently a building type that did not exist in the Middle Ages, such as a parliament, a railway station or a university. Genuine Gothic, from about 1140 to 1520, was built by hand over generations and shows it: rebuildings, changes of style and parts that were never finished.

Facts

The same forms, six hundred years apart

Gothic was born when Abbot Suger had the choir rebuilt at Saint-Denis, north of Paris, consecrated in 1144. The pointed arch, the rib vault and the flying buttress were combined there into a system that made walls tall and light, and over the following hundred years the cathedrals of Chartres, Paris and Amiens were built. How the parts work together is shown by the cathedral diagram in the basics section, and the guide to how a Gothic cathedral was built explains the construction.

After the Renaissance, Gothic was long regarded as barbaric; the word comes from the Goths and began as a term of abuse. In England it nevertheless lived on in churches and colleges, and from the mid-18th century wealthy amateurs began building pleasure houses with pointed arches for the sake of atmosphere. The great wave came after 1830. Augustus Pugin argued in his book Contrasts (1836) that Gothic was the only honest Christian architecture, and at the same time interest in each nation's own Middle Ages was growing across Europe. Gothic Revival became part of historicism, the 19th-century use of earlier styles.

Five ways to spot the difference

The first is regularity. A medieval cathedral took so long to build that the style had time to change. The two west towers of Chartres are a good example: the south tower is plain and dates from the 12th century, while the north tower received its pointed, richly pierced spire only in the early 16th century. Gothic Revival buildings are usually designed by a single architect and built within a few decades, so every pinnacle, crocket and window hood is like the next.

The second is material and workmanship. Medieval stone is hand-cut and the joints are uneven, and the brick of Nordic Brick Gothic is hand-moulded and varies in colour. Gothic Revival often uses machine-sawn stone, factory-made brick, cast iron and cement. The pierced spire of Riddarholmen Church in Stockholm, erected in the 1840s after a fire, is made of cast iron: the form is Gothic, the material industrial.

The third is what the building is for. In the Middle Ages Gothic was used above all for the Church. If you see pointed arches on a railway station, a parliament, a museum or a factory, the building dates from the 19th century. The fourth is the windows: large, single panes of glass and windows that can be opened do not belong to the Middle Ages. The fifth is condition. Stone that has weathered for six hundred years looks different from stone cut 150 years ago, even if both have been restored.

Cologne, Uppsala and Notre-Dame: the Middle Ages completed in the 19th century

The boundary is not always sharp. Cologne Cathedral was begun in 1248, but work stalled in the 16th century, leaving a half-finished south tower with a building crane standing on it for several hundred years. When medieval façade drawings came to light, work resumed in 1842, and the church was completed in 1880. The towers, 157 metres high, are therefore a 19th-century achievement built to a medieval plan. Today Cologne is both Germany's best-known Gothic church and one of the largest Gothic Revival projects.

The same is true of many restorations. Helgo Zettervall gave Uppsala Cathedral its tall spires in the restoration of 1885–1893, and in Paris Eugène Viollet-le-Duc designed the spire of Notre-Dame that burned in 2019 and has since been rebuilt to his drawings. He also completed sculptures and details where he thought the Middle Ages ought to have had them. When you see a well-preserved cathedral, it is therefore wise to ask which parts have been restored.

The great Gothic Revival buildings

The best-known Gothic Revival work is the Palace of Westminster in London, the British Parliament, built in 1840–1870 after the fire of 1834 by Charles Barry, with Pugin responsible for the details. Gothic was meant to show that Parliament had medieval roots. The plan is nonetheless symmetrical and classically ordered; it is the decoration that is Gothic. In the same way the railway received a Gothic palace at St Pancras, where George Gilbert Scott designed the hotel in front of a train shed of iron and glass.

In Budapest the Parliament was built in 1885–1904 with Westminster as its model, and in Sweden Gothic Revival became common in town and country churches in the second half of the 19th century. The style lasted longest in churches and universities: in the United States, Gothic Revival college buildings were still being put up well into the 20th century. The basic features of Gothic are gathered on the style page on Gothic and the 19th-century borrowings on the style page on historicism.

A tip for Swedish churches: a church of red or yellow factory brick with pointed windows, a tall spire and a gallery, preferably in a town that grew with the railway, almost always dates from the second half of the 19th century. The medieval parish church is mostly whitewashed, has a lower tower and small windows that were often enlarged much later, in the 18th or 19th century. If the chancel and nave are also of different widths or heights, the church has grown in stages, which is a mark of the Middle Ages rather than of the 19th century.

How to tell it is Gothic Revival

Exercise

Which of these buildings is Gothic Revival?