| One of the most typical elements of Gothic
    architecture is the tracery found in windows, on walls, and in
    many other places in Gothic churches. What is mathematical about
    it? Tracery is exclusively constructed from circular arcs and
    straight line segments! It is the most mathematical kind of art
    known to me. In many of the thousands of Gothic churches and
    other buildings of that time surviving in Europe you can find
    nice examples, take photos and analyze them geometrically at
    home. Traceries appear some 60 years after the first examples of Gothic
    churches in the 1200's in Reims. There their construction is,
    like that of the typical pointed Gothic window, based on the
    equilateral triangle. In the course of stylistic development,
    the constructions became more and more elaborate and less determined
    by geometry until we find whole windows covered by wavy ornaments
    in the flamboyant late Gothic of about 1500.
 Much more than the usual geometric designs of traceries can be
    found in the cloisters of the Cistercian monastery of Hauterive
    near Fribourg, Switzerland. Here the theme of the windows is
    geometry itself. Regular n-gons are shown for n = 3,4,5,6 and
    8. Variations of the pentagon show the pentagram and a delicately
    constructed rose. The whole cloisters seems to be a commentary
    to Euclid's book IV on the regular n-gons carved in stone.
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