Reims cathedral construction begins

1211

On the site where Clovis had once been baptized, masons laid the first stones of a new Gothic cathedral to crown France's kings. The old cathedral had burned. Over the next century sculptors would fill its portals with a parade of stone angels smiling strangely. The famous Smiling Angel of Reims became an icon of Gothic sculpture, embodying a new warmth in medieval devotional art.