The western façade of Tours Cathedral, with its two small towers, is a noticeable example of the waning Gothic style. The detail is so “charmingly executed as almost to induce the belief, in spite of the fanciful extravagance which it displays, that the architects were approaching to something new and beautiful when the mania for classic detail overtook them.” Looking eastward from the west door one notices the northerly trend of the Cathedral’s axis, commencing from the transept arches. The choir spreads outward at its first bay, the side walls not following the alignment of the body of the church. The glass is both abundant and magnificent in the nave lights, and the enormous clerestory windows display it to the greatest possible advantage. Unfortunately, the fine rose window in the north transept is marred by the cutting across of a vertical pillar, inserted as a support to the crest of the arch. In both transepts the triforium arches present a curious and novel arrangement, the reason for which is not very apparent. The arches are in a double plane, but the openings are not directly one behind another. The pier arches of the nave are plain, with simple panel-like spandrils, the piers themselves supporting a very large clerestory and glazed triforium. In the latter the heads of the arches are filled in with rich Flamboyant tracery, either in imitation of the fleur-de-lys, or with varieties of wheel tracery in double plane. The choir is much earlier than the nave, and its bays show a beautiful proportion and harmony in its members, the whole elevation being supported on clustered columns with stalk capitals and square abacus. In the apse the tracery is a slight variant from that of the choir; the arch-heads are here filled in with trefoil instead of quatrefoil tracery. On the north side of the Cathedral are the remains of some cloisters, joined to the main body by two flying buttresses.