Built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is one of the most important and stylistically unified examples of early Gothic architecture.

A later church building, dating from the tenth or eleventh centuries, was torched during the Easter Insurrection on 25 April 1112.

Three months after the insurrection, members of the clergy at Laon toured France and England with relics belonging to the bishopric.

Using funds raised from the tour, the church was reconstructed and consecrated on August 20, 1114, under Barthélemy de Jur.

Shortly after, the Chapel des Fonts, cloister, and chapter house were built onto the south side of the nave.

Finally, the south transept's facade was remodeled in the early fourteenth century, resulting in the current twin doors and tracery window.

An ornate but structurally artificial upper extension of the cathedral's front facade of unknown date was removed; it was replaced by a balustrade and the current Madonna and Child statue.

The cathedral consists of a cruciform plan with the traditional nave, transepts, and choir, all flanked by single side aisles.

Although the original choir encoded the stylistic template for the rest of the building, it was demolished and replaced in the early thirteenth century.

Instead, the south transept features a massive arched tracery window, which replaced the original rose in the early fourteenth century.

The massive west facade of the cathedral, at the nave end, is notable for its dynamic use of spatial projections.

[6]: 9–13  Laon Cathedral's completed towers (with the exception of that at the central crossing) all consist of two stacked vaulted chambers pierced by lancet openings.

[8] The two western towers contain life-size stone statues of sixteen oxen in their upper arcades, seemingly commemorating the bullocks who hauled equipment and materials during the cathedral's construction.

The left windows depicts scenes from the legend of Theophilus of Adana and the Biblical account of Saint Stephen.

Departing from strictly religious themes, the rose window in the north transept contains personifications of the sciences of the trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).