Cluny Abbey Church III - France

Cluny Abbey Church III

France

The town of Cluny in eastern France’s Burgundy region was important because of the Benedictine abbey jointly founded in 910 by Abbot St. Berno of Burgundy and William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine. The third convent on the site, the great Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul known as Cluny III (mainly 1088–1130), was the largest church, monastic or otherwise, in the world until St. Peter’s, Rome, was completed in the seventeenth century. Cluny III was the high point of Romanesque architecture in France, and, heralding the Gothic, it emphasized the continuity of architecture. Its form and detail repudiate the idea of a succession of discrete styles, each somehow frozen in time.

The reformist Benedictine community that originally occupied a Gallo-Roman villa in Cluny eventually developed an innovative system of centralized ecclesiastical government: by the fourteenth century the abbey controlled over 1,450 Cluniac foundations or priories from England to Poland to Palestine, which together could boast a complement of over 10,000 monks. After the pope himself, Cluny’s abbots were the most powerful clerics in the Roman Catholic Church and were at the epicenter of religious influence in Europe.

Two earlier abbey churches—the first, dedicated in 927, was succeeded by a larger building in 955–981—were replaced at the end of the eleventh century by Cluny III, which commenced soon after the other monastery buildings had been rebuilt (1077– 1085). The new church was over 440 feet (136 meters) long; the narthex and towers added in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries brought the total length to 600 feet (180 meters). The barrel-vaulted ceiling, especially acoustically suited to the Cluniac uninterrupted sung liturgy, soared 98 feet (30 meters) above the floor. There were double transepts and double aisles to both the nave and choir; the chevet end had five chapels. The ceiling of the crossing under a central tower was 119 feet (36 meters) high. Yet Cluny III was remarkable not just for its size.

Its form, emerging over more than a century, demonstrated the perpetual development of Western

religious architecture. Since about 1000, the itinerant mason-architects of Europe had addressed their ecclesiastical clients’ demands for stone-ceiling churches (perhaps prompted by fear of fire), dealing with the major structural problems that entailed. The need to manage the huge loads and thrusts involved had led (although not all at once) to a number of architectural and engineering innovations. Cluny III, a mature expression of the new form, incorporated them all, masterfully blending liturgical and structural necessities—the two towers at the west end to provide longitudinal stiffening; vaulted aisles to brace the walls of the nave against the thrust of the stone vaults; massive side walls reinforced with even thicker buttresses, employed for a similar reason; small windows, creating the appearance of what someone called “the fortresses of God”; and a complex east end, where apsidal chapels with hemidomes completed the lucidly articulated building, which showed exactly how the vast weight of the superstructure was gently coaxed down to the supporting earth.

At the same time, Cluny III had many features that foreshadowed what would be commonplace just a few decades later: piers disguised as clusters of narrow columns, elegantly tall proportions, pointed arches (a lesson from Islam), and sophisticated vault construction. It also had beautifully carved decorations, giving a glimpse of the reemergence of naturalism. Some sources claim that here were to be found some of the first medieval sculptural allegories (dating from 1095) and the prototype for many carved and painted west portals (dating from 1109 to 1115).Cluny III influenced a few great buildings (for example, Paray-le-Monial, La Charité-sur-Loire, and Autun Cathedral). But clergymen are notoriously conservative, and the impact of its avant-garde architecture was therefore limited. Indeed, the design was attacked in a Cistercian polemic even before the work was completed. Pope Urban II, who had been a novice and later prior at Cluny, consecrated the high altar of the unfinished church on 25 October 1095.

He announced that its community had reached “so high a stage of honor and religion that without doubt Cluny surpassed all other monasteries, even the most ancient.”

The abbey and the town both suffered in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. Early in the French Revolution the abbey was suppressed and then closed in 1790. Most of the basilica was demolished a few years later, and only ruins of the main southern transept and bell tower hint at what was once the greatest church in Christendom.

Clifton Suspension Bridge | Bristol, England

Clifton Suspension Bridge

Bristol, England

The River Avon rises in the Cotswolds and falls about 500 feet (150 meters) in its 75-mile (120-kilometer) course to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth. Near Bristol it passes through a channel that was cut in the nineteenth century to give access to oceangoing vessels, and then through the steep Clifton Gorge, where it is daringly crossed by the Clifton Suspension Bridge, 245 feet (75 meters) above the water. The iron structure, with a main span of 702 feet (214 meters), challenged conventional wisdom and pushed the new material and contemporary technology beyond the theoretical limits.

Bristol’s port of Avonmouth was a well-established center for coastwise and international shipping. As the nineteenth century saw accelerating growth in trade and economic prosperity, Bristol’s wealthier citizens wished to secure a market share for their city, and the renown that went with it, in the face of intense competition from such rivals as Liverpool. Perhaps they envied the prestigious bridge at (Conwy, Wales, and the Menai Suspension Bridge, both designed by the Scots engineer Thomas Telford. Funds were in hand to start the project: the Bristol wine merchant William Vick, who died in 1754, had bequeathed £1,000 to build a bridge across Clifton Gorge; the money had been accruing interest while held in trust.

Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, England; Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer, 1830–1864.

A design competition, announced in May 1830, attracted twenty-two entries, including four from the brilliant engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was then only twenty-four years old. The spans he proposed varied between 879 and 916 feet (267 and 279 meters); all were longer than any existing suspension bridge. The jury short-listed four designs (one of Brunel’s among them), before seeking Telford’s opinion. In an arrogant gesture he rejected all the

schemes. His given reason was pragmatic enough: his Menai bridge (1819–1826) had almost been destroyed by crosswinds; it was nearly 579 feet (175 meters) long, and Telford believed that nothing over 600 feet (184 meters) was feasible—the 700 feet across the exposed Clifton Gorge was out of the question. The committee then asked him to submit an alternative design, but the three-span bridge carried on soaring Gothic spires that he produced was unsuitable, even comical. A second competition followed in October 1830, and Telford resubmitted that design, only to see it again rejected. The twelve entries were reduced to four finalists, and Brunel’s proposal, modified so that the main span was only 630 feet (192 meters), was placed second. He went to Bristol to meet the committee and convinced them with arguments about the practicalities and the esthetic quality of his tower design. He was appointed as engineer in 1831.

Brunel had an eye for the stunning landscape, with its high wooded cliffs, and his “Egyptian” towers, although not his favorite stylistic alternative, complemented the drama of the place. He had intended to have them inscribed with hieroglyphs and crowned with sphinxes, but the cost was prohibitive. There were delays for other reasons, including the 1831 Bristol riots associated with the Reform Bill, but lack of funds was the main problem. Work did not start until 1836. More financial shortfalls caused an interruption in 1853, and the piers stood untouched for some years, even being threatened with demolition. Reusing chains from another of Brunel’s works, the demolished Hungerford Suspension Bridge (1841–1845) in London, the Clifton Suspension Bridge was finally opened in 1864, although the original design was not followed completely. Brunel had died five years earlier.

Circus Maximus - Rome, Italy

Circus Maximus

Rome, Italy

The Circus Maximus stood in the Murcia Valley, between the Palatine and the Aventine Hills, the largest and oldest of the four chariot-racing tracks in ancient Rome. It was extended under various administrations until the time of Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.). His alterations, and those ordered by his nephew, the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 b.c.–a.d. 14), created a building about 2,035 feet long by 460 wide (620 by 140 meters), with an arena measuring 1,850 by 280 feet (564 by 85 meters). On each side concrete vaults supported tiers of seats that accommodated at least 150,000 spectators: some sources put the number above 200,000, and others even more. For the purposes of comparison, the Houston Astrodome has a capacity of around 62,000, and Australia’s Melbourne Cricket Ground holds only 100,000 spectators. Like many Roman public edifices, the circus, while not entirely a new building type (it was based on the Greek hippodrome), was built on a scale that the world had not seen before.

Founded when the city was part of the Etruscan kingdom (ca. 600 b.c.), the Circus Maximus remained the major site of diversions for the Roman populace for over a thousand years. The brook that ran through the Murcia Valley was diverted to a culvert, over which the central barrier (spina) of the hairpin track was constructed. The original circus was built of wood, but it was rebuilt and enlarged several times. In 196 b.c., Lucius Stertinius built an arch facing the starting gate, and a year or so later the censors for the games ordered the seating changed so that senators were separated from the plebeians. About thirty years later a vast stage was built for musicians and dancers, and the starting gate was altered. Julius Caesar commissioned a major reconstruction and extension in the first century b.c., and Augustus constructed a shrine that also served as an imperial box from which he could watch the races. In 10 b.c. he erected an obelisk on the spina to commemorate his conquest of Egypt, bringing the Circus Maximus to its greatest glory. Dionysius of Halicarnassus described the Augustan arena as “one of the most beautiful and admirable structures in Rome.”

Following disastrous fires in the wooden parts of the structure in a.d. 103, Trajan again restored the Circus. Each of the three stories of seats was divided by aisles. Marble seats in the first tier were reserved for senators—and for the equestrian class behind them. Senators were also allowed to sit along the podium that defined the track. The plebeians occupied the rows above the select seats. Unlike in other places of public entertainment, the sexes were allowed to sit together—a degree of permissiveness that some Romans considered scandalous.

Events other than chariot racing—animal hunts, gladiatorial games, athletic competitions, and processions—were held in the Circus Maximus. In order to display wild beasts, Julius Caesar had a water-filled moat 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep (3 by 3 meters) made around the arena. About a century later it was filled in to gain more seating space; for safety reasons animal fights were discontinued and eventually staged at the Colosseum. Although all kinds of entertainment were popular, chariot races remained the Romans’ favorite spectator sport, probably for the excitement and the vicarious danger of the reckless races. The crowds fanatically supported the various professional racing factions, named for the colors worn by the charioteers: the red, green, blue, and white. The chariots—usually drawn by four horses— started from twelve gates leading from the Forum Boarium, near the starter’s position. At the far end, where the track entered its sharp 180-degree turn, stood the triumphal arch (built in a.d. 80) through which processions entered the arena. The spina was adorned with gilded shrines, including one to Consus, a god of the harvest, and another to Murcia; at either end were the turning posts. Run under very strict rules, races comprised thirteen turns around those posts, a distance of approximately 4 miles (6.4 kilometers).

During the reign of Augustus, Rome gave no fewer than seventy-seven days a year to public spectacles; seventeen of those were for chariot races. Usually,

twelve races were run each day, although the infamous emperor Gaius Caligula had the number doubled. It is reported that Domitian once had 100 races in a day but was forced, simply for the sake of time, to reduce the thirteen laps to five. By the fourth century a.d. the annual number of race days had risen to sixty-six. Convinced, possibly with good reason, that the circus was the devil’s playground, the church fathers later condemned it. Nevertheless, events continued to be organized well into the Christian era, and the last race was recorded in a.d. 549, seventy-five years after Rome had fallen to the barbarians.

Circus Maximus, Rome, Italy; architect(s) unknown, ca. 600 b.c.–a.d. 103. Detail of model in the Museo della Civita, Rome.

Now, the only visible remains of the Circus Maximus are at the semicircular end. The vaulted brick-and-concrete substructures of the seats on the Palatine side were uncovered by archeologists in the 1930s, and those excavations were extended in 1976. A few years later, work began on the Aventine side of the same end. Every spring, and sometimes in the fall, the Roseto Comunale, Rome’s municipal rose garden on the lower slopes of the Aventine, is opened to the public. Located about halfway along the southwestern side of the Circus Maximus, it presents a spectacle of a less exciting kind.

Chek Lap Kok International Airport | Hong Kong

Chek Lap Kok International Airport

Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s new international airport at Chek Lap Kok is the product of what was at the time the world’s largest engineering and architectural project—a logistical marvel that developed designs in only twentyone months and managed a workforce of up to 21,000 to build the airport facilities as well as the island on which they stand and the extensive ground transport links, in only five years. In 1999, a convention of U.S. construction executives and editors named it

one of the top ten architectural and engineering achievements of the twentieth century.

Anyone who flew into Hong Kong before mid-1998 will always remember the unnerving experience of looking directly into apartment buildings that seemed almost to touch the wingtips as the plane descended to Kai Tak Airport—a dubious thrill that is no longer part of a visit to the crowded island. Kai Tak airfield commenced operations around 1924, becoming a Royal Air Force base three years later. In 1935 it was upgraded to suit growing commercial traffic, and two more runways were added over the next twenty-five years. It was renamed Hong Kong International Airport in 1958 and underwent continual extensions and improvements as the number of flights increased at a dizzying rate. Shortly before it closed in 1998, Kai Tak was processing nearly 30 million international passengers and over 1.5 million tons (1.36 million tonnes) of international cargo every year.

There had been discussions about an out-of-town airport since the 1960s, within an international transport strategy that also included shipping; a plan to construct a new airport was announced in October 1988. Although well down the government’s list of preferred sites (after Nim Wan, Lamma Island, and Clearwater Bay), Chek Lap Kok was chosen, but not unanimously. When it opened on 6 July 1998 the new airport had an annual capacity of 2.76 million tons (2.50 million tonnes) of cargo and 35 million passengers, planned to rise to 87 million by the year 2040. The Provisional Airport Authority, charged with planning and realizing the facility, was established in April 1990. The contract, estimated at almost HK$50 billion (then equivalent to U.S.$6.4 billion), was awarded to the Mott Consortium, comprising Mott. Connell, Ove Arup and Partners; Fisher Marantz, Renfro Stone, O’Brien Kreitzberg and Associates; Wilbur Smith Associates; and the architectural firm of Norman Foster and Partners, which undertook the design of the terminal building.

The first construction stage project was the recreation of the site. In 1992 Chek Lap Kok was a 330-foot (100-meter) hilltop rising from the sea; by June 1995 dredging and reclamation had reshaped it into a 3.7-by-2.2-mile (6-by-3.5-kilometer) flat platform—about four times its original area—23 feet (7 meters) above sea level. For the first year the airport operated with a single runway. Now known as the South Runway, it is used mostly for landings; the North Runway, put into service late in August 1999, is used principally for departures. Handling an average of 450 flights a day, Chek Lap Kok has forty-eight frontal aircraft gates at the terminal, twenty-seven on the apron, and thirteen cargo gates.

The 1,400-yard-long (1.27-kilometer), nine-level terminal building, under 45 acres (18 hectares) of 120-foot-wide (36-meter) steel barrel vaults, is the largest enclosed public space ever built. An indicator of the logistical achievement of the entire project, the superstructure of the vast Y-shaped building was completed in only three years. Its design was constrained by off-site fabrication of components that could be site-assembled, in much the same way as Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace 150 years earlier. The air-cooled central terminal space, over 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide, houses the usual airport functions. More than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) of moving walkways carry incoming passengers along the 2,400-foot (720-meter) concourse, through the baggage hall, to 124 immigration desks and seventy-six custom positions. Departing passengers are served by 288 check-in desks. Dimensions are difficult to convey; suffice it to say that the baggage hall alone is as big as New York’s Yankee Stadium, and the fully automatic baggage-handling system can process 19,000 items an hour. There is also the inevitable shopping area—the “Hong Kong Sky Mall”—in five zones and comprising 154 specialist retail, food, and drink outlets. Nearby, the twelve-story Regal Airport Hotel, with 1,100 rooms and connected to the passenger terminal by a covered walkway, completes the facility. Internal shuttle trains run through a 20-foot-high (6-meter) tunnel, 106 feet (32 meters) wide, beneath the building. The design of Chek Lap Kok allows for expansion that will include an additional concourse and passenger terminal, as well as additional air cargo, catering, and maintenance facilities.

Chek Lap Kok was complemented by a complex Airport Core Project involving several elements and costing HK$ 155.3 billion (about U.S.$20 billion). The high-speed Airport Express Railway, part of Hong Kong’s mass-transit rail link, and 21 miles (34

kilometers) of 3-lane highway across the Tsing Ma Bridge (the world’s longest road-rail suspension bridge) provide alternative routes between the airport and Kowloon and further through the new Western Tunnel to Hong Kong Island and the central business district. The scheme also includes a new town for 150,000 people, because height restrictions, so necessary for Kai Tak Airport, have now been lifted. And, of course, the 2,350-acre (940-hectare) Kai Tak site became free for redevelopment. Plans are in hand for mixed commercial and recreational uses among residential towers accommodating 300,000 people. Work should be completed by 2003.

Chartres Cathedral (Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady)

France

Chartres, capital of France’s Department of Eure-et-Loir, stands on the Eure River, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southwest of Paris. An important center in pre-Roman Gaul, it was one of the sacred places of the Druids. Overrun by the Normans, the region later settled down, and late in the thirteenth century it became the appanage of Charles de Valois, who was briefly (1284–1290) king of Aragon and Sicily. François I made it a Duchy in 1528. Louis XIV granted the Duchy of Chartres to the House of Orléans, an arrangement that lasted until about 1850.

Chartres prospered in the Middle Ages because it possessed a precious relic—a piece of oriental silk believed to be the veil worn by the Virgin Mary during the birth of Christ. Chartres therefore became an important pilgrimage site, and the chapter of the cathedral established trade fairs to coincide with the four annual feasts of the Virgin. The late-twelfth-century Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady at Chartres, recognized, as “a reference point of French Gothic art,” is a milestone in the development of Western architecture because it employs all the elements of a new structural system: the pointed arch; the rib-and-panel vault; and, most significantly, the flying buttress.

Only the Royal Portal on the west front (1150–1175) and the crypt remain of the Romanesque cathedral commenced on the site of an earlier church in 1145. The remainder was destroyed by fire in 1194, and, not least because religious fervor was running high in France, construction immediately commenced on a new cathedral, a “turning point in Gothic architecture” that rose upon the foundations of the old. Financed by all levels of local society (which also provided much of the voluntary labor), most of the building was finished by 1223. The cathedral was consecrated in 1260

This Chartres was architecturally radical because the upper part of the walls above the arcades that separated aisles from nave was essentially stone frames for the expansive colored stained-glass windows, punctuated by the piers that carried the 112-foot-high (34-meter) quadripartite vaults. The lateral stability of earlier churches had depended upon massive masonry walls with frugal openings; here, there were diaphanous, luminous walls because the stability was provided by flying buttresses, used in a way previously unseen.

Flying buttresses, derived by the master masons by persistent experiment, are masonry arches that transmit the sideways thrusts of the stone roof vaults to vertical buttresses—in effect, very thick but very narrow walls at right angles to the building—constructed, against the outside walls of the aisles. The resultant force of the thrust and the tremendous selfweight of the towering buttresses created a stable structural system. Once hidden beneath the roofs, at Chartres the flying buttresses were exposed and decorated as a feature of the architecture. There was now available a construction system in which rib-and-panel vaulting (employing the pointed arch) was carried by piers and buttresses whose stability was ensured by the dynamic balance of thrust and counterthrust. These had been used in Durham Cathedral, completed around 1133, and the pointed arch had been exploited in Suger’s St. Denis a decade later. They reached a mature synthesis at Chartres in 1194, where, as one historian has observed, the master mason—sadly, he remains anonymous—“outlined new principles which would inspire all the great architects of the thirteenth century.” After Chartres, the builder-architects of northern Europe further developed the structural skeleton whose columns, arches, and flying buttresses liberated the wall from its load-bearing function. The inevitable result was that the interiors of the Gothic cathedrals became loftier and lighter, illuminated by vast expanses of stained glass. Of those transcendent spaces, Chartres was the forerunner.

The cathedral is celebrated for its 152—originally there were 186—stained-glass windows, dating from about 1200 to 1235, with a total area exceeding 21,500 square feet (2,000 square meters). Used to instruct the illiterate masses, most are replete with figures from Bible stories and religious legends; others propagandize the trade guilds and organizations that paid for them. The architecture of Chartres is also enriched with sculpture; in all, there are about 2,000 figures, some dating from the Romanesque church. These figures, too, are remarkably innovative, because they are among the earliest medieval carvings to depart from the iconographic renderings of human beings to impart individual features, the reawakening of a naturalism that foreshadows the rise of Christian humanism in Europe.

Chartres has altered only a little in its 800-year lifetime. Another fire damaged it in the twelfth century, and the northwest spire was hit by lightning and replaced between 1507 and 1513. The church survived the political and religious conflicts of the sixteenth century and, remarkably, those of the French Revolution (1787–1799). The roof was damaged by fire in 1836, necessitating replacement. The current problem is more insidious, and preservation programs are in hand to guard against air-pollution damage to the historic stained-glass windows.

Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel - Aachen, Germany

The city of Aachen stands 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Cologne on the River Wurm, a tributary of the Roer, in the German stare of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Romans knew the place as Aquisgranum, famous for its health spas since the first century a.d. The Merovingian kings, who ruled the Franks from a.d. 481 to 751, held court there, but the town enjoyed great eminence during the Carolingian dynasty, especially under Charlemagne (reigned 768–814). His Palatine Chapel, now the central element of Aachen Cathedral, is the finest surviving example of Carolingian architecture. This architectural jewel copied the centrally planned Byzantine church of San Vitale at Ravenna, Italy (525–548), clearly demonstrating one way in which building ideas are transmitted between cultures. The ability of its northern builders to assimilate a southern European style was in itself a considerable achievement.

Charlemagne succeeded his father, Pepin the Short, as king of the Franks in 768. The first strong secular ruler in Europe since the ancient Roman Empire, he was in theory—but only in theory—subordinate to the pope, a relationship symbolized by his coronation by Pope Leo III as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800. Six years earlier he had established his residence and Court at Aachen, the town where he was born. In 792, he commissioned Bishop Odo of Metz to design and build the royal complex, 50 acres (20 hectares) in area: the palace, law court, and, of course, the Palatine Chapel. Einhard (who was also Charlemagne’s biographer) was appointed as works supervisor. Wanting to imitate the grandeur of the imperial Roman rulers, the king had looked for precedents. Historians have suggested that his palace was based on several models, Constantine’s palatine court (ca. 310) in Trier, Germany, among them. Charlemagne also had been to Ravenna on Italy’s northern Adriatic coast, where he had been dazzled by the glorious Byzantine buildings. Kenneth Clark opines that, when the Frankish king saw the scintillating mosaics in San Vitale, he “realized how magnificent an emperor could be.” Returning to Aachen, Charlemagne gave instructions for a replica to be built as his private chapel.

Constructed at the southern end of the palace complex on the site of an earlier church, the domed octagonal Palatine Chapel was built between 796 and 804. It was consecrated by Pope Leo III in 805 to serve as Charlemagne’s chapel, a reliquarium for his collection, and a church for members of the royal court. It is 54 feet (16.5 meters) in diameter and 124 feet (38 meters) high—at the time the largest dome north of the Alps. Of course, beautiful as it is, in the circumstances Odo’s building could never have been a perfect replica. Architectural ideas are transmitted by several means: traveling architects, craftsmen, or patrons; images of buildings; and published theories. None is ideal. Images cannot convey the spatial aspects of buildings, and a visit to a building, no matter how perceptive and prolonged, leaves the visitor with mere impressions only. For those reasons, San Vitale lost a good deal in the translation, so to speak, even if Charlemagne imported columns and marbles from Ravenna and Rome and Byzantine craftsmen to assist with the work. Moreover, the refinement of the Italian church had been achieved after years of experiment with indigenous structural and decorative systems. Nevertheless, the Palatine Chapel at Aachen is an extraordinary advance upon preceding Carolingian buildings.

It is much sturdier than San Vitale, having an unmistakably Roman structure. Like early Roman churches, it was approached from the west through a huge symmetrical atrium (said to have held 7,000 people), the well-defined entrance to the octagon flanked by towers with turret staircases leading to an upper level. Above the entrance was a place from which the emperor could appear to his people. None of the atrium survives. The octagonal central space of the original chapel is crowned with a lofty mosaic-faced dome constructed as a series of groin vaults: opposite the entrance, on both levels, was the sanctuary. The octagon is surrounded at the lower level by an ambulatory with a groin-vaulted dark sandstone ceiling. Those vaults, remarkable for the absence of transverse arches—Odo’s own innovation—are supported at the angles of the octagon on large piers that also carry a semicircular dividing arcade. The upper level of the ambulatory is roofed with an annular barrel vault and separated from the octagon by a screen of two pairs of superimposed marble, porphyry, and granite columns within wide arched openings. At right angles to the main axis of the chapel, and reached at both levels through the sanctuary, were once mirrored north and south annexes.

On the decision of the members of the court, although he wished to be buried at St. Denis, Charlemagne’s remains were interred in the Palatine Chapel in 814. Thereafter, until 1531, it became the imperial coronation church. From 1355, to accommodate the enormous traffic of pilgrims, the choir was rebuilt in the Gothic style, several chapels and a narthex were added, and the building became Aachen Cathedral. It was dedicated in 1414. The original mosaic on the interior of the dome was replaced by one Salviati, a Venetian, between 1870 and 1873. The cathedral was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978. A restoration program began in 1995.

Channel Tunnel - England and France

England and France

The English Channel, known, to the French as la Manche (the Sleeve), is a narrow strip of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from the rest of Europe. It is at its narrowest at the hazardous Dover Strait, notorious for its strong tides, dense fogs, and frequent gale-force winds. The Channel Tunnel— popularly called “the Chunnel”—provides a railroad connection between Britain and France under the Dover Strait and is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever undertaken in Europe, among the great engineering feats of the twentieth century. The complicated, visionary project was dogged by financial, logistical, and safety problems, exacerbated by two languages, two governments, two sets of legal requirements, ten contractors, and 220 financial backers in twenty-six countries.

The idea of the fixed link has a long history, the earliest recorded proposal, by a French engineer named Nicolas Desmaret, dating from 1751. About fifty years later Albert Mathieu Favier suggested a horse-drawn railroad under the Channel; his scheme included an artificial island that would serve as a staging post. Another French engineer, Aimé Thomé de Gamond, worked on several plans for almost forty years from 1830, making careful geological surveys of the seabed. In 1856 he proposed a railroad tunnel between Folkestone in the southern English county of Kent and Cap Gris-Nez on the French coast. A modified version was supported by the British engineers William Low and Sir John Clarke Hawkshaw in 1867, and a report was published the following year. For several reasons, largely political, the project went no further.

In the meantime the development of a pneumatic boring machine revolutionized tunneling techniques. In the mid-1870s Channel Tunnel companies were formed in England and France. In 1881 the South Eastern Railway acquired land near Folkestone, and the Submarine Railway Company bored 2,100 yards (2,000 meters) of pilot tunnel under the English Channel at Shakespeare Cliff. In France, 1,800 yards (1,600 meters) were drilled at Sangatte, southwest of Calais. Work stopped in May 1882 when the security-conscious British Parliament, afraid of undersea invasion, opposed the project. It remained in abeyance until after the Great War.

Work on a trial bore at Folkestone Warren in 1922 was aborted after only 140 yards (128 meters), again because of political antagonism in England. Despite support from eminent politicians, the Channel Tunnel was shelved until the Great Depression and another World War had passed. In 1948 the South Eastern Railway (by then Southern Railways) assigned its plans on to the nationalized British Railways, but it was not until 1956 that the French/British Channel Tunnel Study Group was formed to investigate the economic and engineering aspects of a fixed link. Four years later, it recommended a tunnel—in fact, two single-track railway tunnels and a service tunnel—between Folkestone and Sangatte. The two governments agreed to proceed with the project.

Years of surveys and research yielded a scheme the cost of which would be divided equally between Britain and France, and work began on both sides of the Channel in 1974. Only a year later Britain withdrew from the project when the estimated cost was increased by 200 percent. A pilot tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff was abandoned, and the project again lapsed. In 1984 it was once more agreed to in principle at an Anglo-French summit, and applications were invited from the private sector to build the tunnel. The successful tenderer for the design, planning, and construction, announced in January 1986, was Transmanche Link (TML), a consortium

of British and French corporations. The British Channel Tunnel Group (Balfour Beatty Construction, Costain UK, George Wimpey International, Taylor Woodrow Construction, Tarmac Construction, Midland Bank, and National Westminster Bank) was to build the English terminal and 14 miles (22.3 kilometers) of tunnels from Shakespeare Cliff. France-Manche, the French group (Bouygues, Dumez, Societé Auxiliaire d’Enterprises, Societé Generale d'Enterprises Sainrapt et Brice, Spie Batignolles, Banque Nationale de Paris, Credit Lyonnais, and Banque Indosuez) was responsible for the French terminal and the remainder of the tunnels from Sangatte. In order to finance the work, a private Anglo-French organization, Eurotunnel, was established and given a fifty-five year concession agreement to build and operate the link. Construction was under way, with three tunnel-boring machines at Shakespeare Cliff and three more at Sangatte by November 1987. The excavators met on 1 December 1990.

The 31-mile-long (50-kilometer) Channel Tunnel connects the terminals at Folkestone, England, and Coquelles, near Calais, France. The submarine section is nearly 24 miles (38 kilometers) long. The two concrete-lined, single-track railroad tunnels, 25 feet (7.6 meters) in diameter, are spaced 98 feet (30 meters) apart, and a 16-foot-diameter (4.8-meter) tunnel between them is used for maintenance and ventilation. Two huge crossover chambers allow trains to switch tunnels. Maintenance-access cross passages every 1,230 feet (375 meters) link the central service tunnel and the rail tunnels. At 820-foot (250-meter) intervals, piston ducts arch above the service tunnel to link the others and relieve the pressure created by speeding trains. The tunnels are drilled through the rock at an average of 150 feet (45 meters) beneath the seabed. Electrical power for drainage pumps, lighting, and trains is fed from the national supply grids in England and France.

The Chunnel was officially opened on 10 December 1993, and Eurotunnel commenced its commercial operations six months later. At the time of completion, the project had cost U.S.$13.5 billion. Four different services pass through the tunnel: Le Shuttle carries tourist vehicles: Le Shuttle Freight handles commercial vehicles such as vans, trucks, and semitrailers; Eurostar transports pedestrian passengers; and other freight trains travel between Britain and mainland Europe. The journey between Paris and London takes just three and a half hours; the actual Channel crossing only thirty-five minutes. The Channel Tunnel is only one element of the European Community’s plan for a 12,500-mile (20,000-kilometer) high-speed rail network linking cities across the continent.