Fig. 9.—Palaces on the Grand Canal, Venice. (14th Century.)
In towns and cities much beautiful domestic architecture is to be found in the ordinary dwelling-houses, e.g. houses from Chester and Lisieux (Figs. [14] and [15]); but many specimens have of course perished, especially as timber was freely used in their construction. Dwelling-houses of a high order of excellence, and of large size, were also built during this period. The Gothic palaces of Venice, of which many stand on the Grand Canal (Fig. [9]), are the best examples of these, and the lordly Ducal Palace in that city is perhaps the finest secular building which exists of Gothic architecture.
Municipal buildings of great size and beauty are to be found in North Italy and Germany, but chiefly in Belgium, where the various town-halls of Louvain, Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, &c., vie with each other in magnificence and extent.
Many secular buildings also remain to us of which the architecture is Gothic. Among these we find public halls and large buildings for public purposes—as Westminster Hall, or the Palace of Justice at Rouen; hospitals, as that at Milan; or colleges, as King’s College, Cambridge, with its unrivalled chapel. Many charming minor works, such as fountains, wells (Fig. [10]), crosses, tombs, monuments, and the fittings of the interior of churches, also remain to attest the versatility, the power of design, and the cultivated taste of the architects of the Gothic period.
Fig. 10.—Well at Regensburg. (15th Century.)