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Gothic Architecture and Its Rose Windows Gothic architecture originated in France during the twelfth century, dominating the architecture for the next four hundred years in Western Europe. Gothic architecture spread throughout the entire continent, reaching places like Scandinavia to the Byzantine provinces of Central Europe. By 1400, Gothic had become the universal style of building in the Western world, and included many types of structures. Gothic architects designed town halls, royal palaces, courthouses and hospitals. It was in the service of the Church that the Gothic style attained its most meaningful expression, for the Church was the most inexhaustible builder of the Middle Ages, providing the widest scope for the development of architectural ideas and calling forth the best talents. Traditional cathedrals like Norte-Dame, Paris contain the conventional elements of Gothic. On the exterior, there are triumphal arch doorways, clerestory, flying buttresses, spire, pinnacles, gargoyles, transept, apse, and rose windows. On the interior, there are side aisles, ribbed vaults, pointed arches, three-story elevation, gallery, triforium, ambulatory, narthex, crossing apse, and a nave. A vast majority of the well-known cathe