Gothic secular and domestic architecture
It is also the architecture of many non-religious buildings, such as castles, palaces, town halls, guildhalls, universities and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings.
The area encompassing modern Germany, southern Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic and much of northern Italy (excluding Venice and Papal State) was nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire, but local rulers exercised considerable autonomy.
[4][5] Germany and the Lowlands had large flourishing towns that grew in comparative peace, in trade and competition with each other, or united for mutual wealth, as in the Hanseatic League.
[4][5] From the 10th to the 13th century, Romanesque architecture had become a pan-European style and manner of construction, affecting buildings in countries as far apart as Ireland, Croatia, Sweden, and Sicily.
On the other hand, some regions such as England and Spain produced defining characteristics rarely seen elsewhere, except where they have been carried by itinerant craftsmen, or the transfer of bishops.
Beginning in the 12th century, urbanisation slowly again started to spread across Europe, where urban development had since the fall of the Roman Empire in general been brought to a standstill or of very limited scope.
[9] These cities and towns had their own characteristics: "Purpose-built on unoccupied land, these bastides were immediately different from older medieval villages with winding streets that grew willy-nilly over decades.
In England, a symmetrical plan was conceived but never completely carried out for New Winchelsea, one of the so-called Cinque Ports, wine trading posts in Kent and Sussex.
The Piazza del Campo in Siena, Italy is one of the earliest examples of "coherent town planning along aesthetic lines, perhaps for the first time since antiquity.
In the cities of northern Italy, this development started early and many Gothic town halls and other civic monuments have to a large extent survived to this day.
Notable examples of such Hanseatic towns with rich medieval heritage include Visby,[14] Tallinn,[15] Toruń,[16] Stralsund and Wismar[17] to name a few.
Typical examples of these often severe-looking, strictly military structures are Torrelobatón, El Barco de Ávila and Montealegre castles.
An atypical but inventive piece of Gothic architecture is the completely round Bellver Castle on Mallorca island, built in 1300-14 for James II of Majorca by architect Pere Salvà.
[2] In France, the late medieval period — especially the time of the Hundred Years' War — saw the construction of a large number of new, feudal castles and walled towns.
[2] In parts of what is today Poland and the Baltic States, the crusading Teutonic Knights erected castles, so-called Ordensburgen in recently conquered areas.
The crusading order's former headquarters at Malbork (German: Marienburg) castle in Poland is, together with the Papal palace in Avignon, one of the greatest secular buildings of the Middle Ages.
Notable examples of still extant Gothic town walls still surround the historical centres of Carcassonne, France, Tallinn, Estonia and York, England.
But the Middle Ages saw the development of both purpose-built, sometimes specialised hospitals and almshouses, conceived to provide housing for the elderly or long-term ill.
[2] The partially preserved Conciergerie in Paris, formerly a royal palace, is a less intact example of medieval palatial architecture in France.
The house of Jacques Coeur in Bourges and the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris are examples of lesser (not royal or papal) but still luxurious, urban residences from the late medieval period.
[2] A number of medieval shipyards, notably the Drassanes[23] in Barcelona, Spain and the Venetian Arsenal in Venice, Italy survive to this day.
