Terminology

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Reims Cathedral
  • "Facade": this word implies a "face", a carefully composed structure with its elements arranged to create an impression. The word doesn't apply to the side view of a building, unless the building is a REnaissance or Classical palace that has several significant facades. The side of a Gothic building is like the back-stage view of a theatre, with its mass of "behind-the-scenes" props and struts which support the internal "production".
North and south "facades" only occur on the end of transepts.... and then not always. Chartres Cathedral has important examples of north and south facades because it has huge decorated portals on each transept. Many other cathedrals do not have important portals on their transepts, and so the terminal is referred to as the "transept end" rather than the "transept facade".
If you uploaded those pictures as "northern facade" etc, could you please correct the names.
  • "Tympanum" means the space enclosed by an arch or pediment immediately above a door. This space is often carved but occasionally has instead a small stained glass window. Reims Cathedral has a window in the tympanum of its main portal. Note that this is completely distinct from the window that rises above the arches of the portal. If you have mis-labelled the pics on uploading, could you please fix this as it is confusing to people who may want to use them later.
  • Orientation- it's very confusing to refer to a northern side and an eastern end when the cathedral is in fact oriented differently.
  • Your pics: You seem to have uploaded them to Wikipedia. In general they should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Unless, for some reason, you don't want them used in other articles. Unless you have labelled them as copyright, they will be copied across. You can take the opportunity of copying them to Wikimedia Commons, to correct the errors.

Amandajm (talk) 18:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

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Participate in the deletion discussions at the nomination pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:22, 3 October 2022 (UTC)Reply