Together, they reveal how 1000 years of cathedral-building shaped modern Europe, and influenced art, culture and society around the world. Dr Wells brings these buildings vividly to life, peopling them with their authors and sponsors, their triumphs and tribulations, and beautifully illustrated. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.

Cults grew without it: the relics of the Blessed William Fitzherbert and Edward the Confessor were promoted, at York and Westminster respectively, for decades before they received the ultimate imprimatur from Rome. Over a million people from across the globe are welcomed through the doors at Canterbury every year. Walking around a cathedral today can be a solemn and an awe-inspiring experience, but what if we could stand inside the same building and travel back 800 years or so?A glorious illustrated history of sixteen of the world's greatest cathedrals, interwoven with the extraordinary stories of the people who built them. Walkelin, it is said, had pressed every last citizen of Winchester into service and stripped the woods bare. More than architectural biographies, these are human stories of triumph and tragedy that take the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the mason’s yard to the cloisters of power. Moreover, the intersection of pilgrims and relics also made cathedrals into engines of the divine: St James had produced just eight recognised miracles in his first thousand years.

The central focus of the book is, however, the zenith of cathedral building, spanning the millennium 500 to 1500 AD , sweeping from Byzantine grandeur to the more modern interpretations found in Milan and Moscow, when the architect – as we understand the profession today – began to emerge.

It takes in their cultural landscapes, the physical settings, as well as the personal stories, relationships and tragedies that marked each architectural revolution, from the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, York Minster of England, where countless disasters (deliberate, accidental and foolish) wreaked havoc on its fabric, to the Hagia Sophia of modern-day Turkey in the south, an iconic landmark in which are entwined the legacies of medieval Christianity, the Ottoman Empire, resurgent Islam and secular societies.