Transept

Full descriptions of the elements of a Gothic floorplan are found at the entry Cathedral diagram.

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In Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture, the transept is the area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building. The transept separates the nave from the sanctuary, whether apse, choir, chevet, presbytery or chancel. The transepts cross the nave at the "crossing" (plan, right), which belongs equally to the main nave axis and to the transept. Upon its four piers, the crossing may support a spire, a central tower (see Gloucester Cathedral) or a crossing dome.

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Since the altar is usually located at the east end of a church, a transept extends to the north and south. The north and south end walls often hold decorated windows of stained glass, such as rose windows, in stone tracery.

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Some basilicas and the church and cathedral planning that descended from them, were built without transepts, but this is rare. Sometimes the transepts are reduced to matched chapels. More often the transepts will extend well beyond the sides of the rest of the building, forming the shape of a cross; this is called a "Latin cross" groundplan, and these extensions are known as the arms of the transept. A "Greek cross" groundplan, with all four extensions the same length, produces a central-plan structure with consequences for the liturgy.

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When churches retain a single transept, as at Pershore Abbey, there is generally a historical disaster, fire, war or funding, to explain the anomaly. At Beauvais only the chevet and transepts stand; the nave of the cathedral was never completed after a collapse of the daring high vaulting in 1284. At St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague, only the choir and part of a southern transept were completed, until a renewed building campaign in the 19th century.

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Romanesque: Romanesque may refer to:...

Gothic: Besides its original meaning, "of or relating to the Goths (Gothos, Getas), a Germanic tribe" and thus the Gothic language and the Gothic alphabet, the word Gothic has been used to refer to distinctly different things:...

Christian: :This article is about the religious people known as Christians; for the 1980s British music group, see The Christians.For other uses of the term Christian, see Christian (disambiguation)....

Transept related Images and Photos (experimental)

Transept of the Great Exhibition of Paxton's Crystal Palace	View from the Transept Looking West	Transept of the Crystal Palace pub. by Day and Son and Ackermann and Co.	Chapel in the South Transept Rouen Cathedral
A Portion of the Transept of the Great Exhibition of 1851 Showing Stalls with the Wares	Rose Window of the North Transept	The Second Coming of Christ; Rose Window from the South Transept of Chartres Cathedral	Great Exhibition of 1851. Decoration of the Transept
The Baptism of Clovis I in 496 BC from the Right Transept	St. Paul The Four Evangelists and Four Doctors of the Church South Transept 1551