Die Revolte der Gotik - Architektur der Spätgotik in Mitteleuropa

In 1333, Francesco Petrarca, the Italian poet and historian, admired the Cologne Cathedral, which is rightly called the most magnificent. In the 15th century, the humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who was pope from 1458 to 1464, wrote an enthusiastic praise of Nuremberg. After a visit to Strasbourg, he concluded, in light of the cathedral tower, that the Germans were the best architects in the world. Although these cultured travelers came from Italy, they were not yet constrained by the perspective of the supposed superiority and universality of the classical world. However, by the end of the Renaissance, the idea prevailed that only antiquity was the great beacon of the Western world—a mindset that overlooks and disregards the cultural achievements of the Middle Ages.