Of the condition of Noyon at the present time we know little; of what this may be in a few months’ time we know less. The town itself was of the oldest, its foundation being Roman, and within its walls Chilperic was buried in 721, while Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks about thirty years before he became Emperor, and Hugh, first of the Capetian dynasty, was here chosen king in 987. Incidentally, the town was also the birthplace of John Calvin. The ancient cathedral was burned in 1131 and the present work begun shortly after, though it is hard to believe that much of the existing structure antedates the year 1150. The crossing and transepts date from about 1170, the nave about ten years later, while the west front and towers are of the early part of the next century. The certainty and calm assurance of the work is remarkable. Paris, which is later, is full of tentative experiments, but there is no halting here, rather a serene certainty of touch that is perfectly convincing. The plan is curious in that it has transepts with apsidal ends, after the fashion of Rhenish Romanesque, one of the few instances in France. The alternating system is used throughout, and the vault was originally sexpartite; the interior order consists of a low arcade, high triforium, triforium gallery, and a clerestory comprised wholly within the vault lines; round and pointed arches are used indiscriminately, and the flying buttresses are perhaps the earliest that emerged from the protection of the triforium roofs. In the choir, which is earliest in date, the ornament is rude, even rudimentary, though distinctly Gothic in form, but in the nave twenty years has served to change this into work of the most brilliant and classical beauty. In 1293 the whole town was destroyed by fire, and the cathedral wrecked; it was immediately reconstructed, however, and at this time the sexpartite gave place to quadripartite vaulting, while the west front, with its great towers, very noble in their proportions and their powerful buttressing, was completed. This rebuilding and the loss of all the original glass has left Noyon less perfect than many of the neighbouring churches, but it still remained a grave and strikingly solemn example of the transition.