Sixteen cathedrals to see before you die

There can be no clearer illustration of the central role that great cathedrals continue to play in a nation’s life than the outpouring of grief that greeted the catastrophic blaze in Notre-Dame in 2019. President Macron described the building as ‘our history, our literature, our imagination, the place where we experienced all our greatest moments’. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of any major European city without a cathedral at its heart.

Emma J. Wells has written an accessible, authoritative and lavishly illustrated account of the building of 16 of ‘the world’s greatest cathedrals’. Her subjectivity is evident in that only seven feature among Simon Jenkins’s top 25 in his Europe’s 100 Best Cathedrals, although those seven – Amiens, Canterbury, Chartres, Cologne, Paris, Wells and Winchester – would surely be included on anyone’s list.

Heaven on Earth begins with the Byzantine Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and ends with Brunelleschi’s Renaissance dome for Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.