Brick Gothic

In northern Germany, Poland, the Baltic states and Scandinavia, good building stone is scarce. The answer is fired brick. Brick Gothic spreads with trade and the Hanseatic League, and the monastic orders – the Dominicans above all – carry the know-how from monastery to monastery.

Sigtuna, the mid-1200s. The Dominicans build a friary and church. For the first time in the country, brick is fired. The choir and friary are consecrated on the Feast of the Assumption in 1247 or 1248. The choir still has Romanesque features, but the nave, finished in the mid-1250s, shows an early Gothic – Mälardalen Gothic. At the Reformation the friary is torn down. The church survives.

Uppsala, around 1270. A new cathedral begins to rise, and a French master builder, Estienne de Bonneuil, is contracted. The bricks are made and fired near the site, but the pillars at the front are Gotland limestone. Money runs out, plague arrives, and only in 1435 can the cathedral be consecrated. The towers come later still. What we see today is also Helgo Zettervall's cathedral: in the 1880s he restores it in a Gothic Revival spirit and gives it the tall spires.

Malmö, the early 1300s. The old Romanesque church of St Nicholas is pulled down piece by piece, and St Peter's is built from east to west. The model is St Mary's in Lübeck. The result is a basilica in Baltic Brick Gothic, with higher vaults and lighter interiors. The tower collapses in 1420. It is rebuilt and collapses again in 1442.

Brick cannot be carved, so the ornament has to be built. Moulded brick, patterns in different-coloured brick, white-plastered blind niches and, above all, stepped gables bring the walls to life.

Brick Gothic Revival. 19th-century brick churches like to imitate Brick Gothic. Look at the bricks – see above. In Uppsala Cathedral the two meet: medieval walls, 1880s spires.