Gothic Revival at Faridkot (Perspectives‪)‬

The architectural style that flourished in Western Europe from circa 1140 to around the middle of the 16th century goes by the label "Gothic architecture". This term was not coined by the builders themselves but by the Italian artists of the Renaissance period who used it in a disparaging sense. They identified the builders with the Goth tribes, destroyers of the classical art of the Roman empire. In England, the word "Gothik" as used by 17th- and 18th-century writers implies "tasteless" and "bizarre". The pointed arches and sharply tapering spires of the Gothic style evoked the contempt of architects engaged in the revival of soothing classical styles. Fashions, however, have their periods of development, decline, and revival. What is considered tasteless and bizarre at a particular point of time may be found attractive at another point. And so it happened with the Gothic style. Eighteenth-century Western Europe witnessed the rise of a romantic interest in medievalism; as a result the Gothic architectural style once again came into vogue. Historians termed this resurgence the "Gothic Revival".