Comparison and contrast of Skellig Michael and Reims Cathedral

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Waves rage and crash against the harsh uneven rock as you make your way up to the top of a jagged peak, where you as a monk, both live and pray during your brief glimpse of life here on earth, waiting for your eternity in Heaven. Versus standing outside a great ornate, giant building which makes you seem like an insignificant speck in comparison. Then walking in with the sun setting at your back you turn around to see the rays of color flooding into the nave making it glitter as though you were in Heaven itself. Both the hermitage of Skellig Michael and Reims Cathedral had a specific intention for which they were built or constructed therefore, when the buildings where built the look of the building not only reflected their surroundings, and the culture, but also their function. A remote island off the southwest coast of Ireland in Country Kerry, 600 feet above the sea, lays Skellig Michael. Sitting atop the steep sides of the rocky island of Skellig Michael since about the 7th century is a Monastic Complex. The buildings were built with dry-stone construction technology employed by the early monks. The monastery sits on a sloping plateau of rock above the sea. It was originally reached by a series of stone staircases that rose from the water’s edge. The monastery has the appearance of a small walled town. Two large walled terraces lie inside the entrance, and an inner doorway leads through a massive wall into the monastic enclosure. On the inside of the enclosure are six dry-stone corbelled beehive like cells which are built into the hill on man-made stone terraces. The cells face south and an early dry-stone oratory. The entire enclosure is also paved. On the other side of the island lies the south peak. On top of a slender pinnacle 700 feet high on narrow man-made terraces, and constructed around the summit, lay a remote hermitage. Here a

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