Amiens Cathedral: western frontispiece

We see here the "classic" Gothic frontispiece with three vertical segments each with a great portal opening into the main vessel and aisles of the cathedral. Amiens thus appears to belong to a great "family" of contemporaneous cathedrals including Notre-Dame of Paris, Reims, Noyon and Soissons Cathedral. The three portals at Amiens are divided by great buttresses which rise to form the corners of two western towers. The deeply-recessed portals capped by gables lend the composition a strong resemblance to the western frontispiece of Laon Cathedral and the transepts of Chartres. However, Amiens is unique in that each of the western towers is formed around a shallow rectangle, not a square as was the rule elsewhere, and the entire weight is carried on the great exterior buttresses linked by a bridge-like structure just above the lateral gables.
Work on the frontispiece began soon after 1220 with the laying out of the lowest courses and the construction of the right portal (Mère Dieu). The left portal (Saints) followed in the 1230s and the central portal (Last Judgment) in the 1240s by which time the upper levels had been completed up to the cornice over the rose window. However, the installation of the two horizontal galleries at mid-level was delayed until around 1300. The right tower was added in the 1360s and the left one soon afterwards. The original rose window was replaced soon before 1520: the designer was probably Master Pierre Tarisel