A basalt-columned expressionist tower rising over Reykjavík like cooling lava made architecture.

Wren’s great dome over the City of London — an English answer to the basilicas of Rome.

Tiered timber roofs and dragon finials — a wooden church kept nearly intact since the twelfth century.

A pale marble thicket of pinnacles and statues — among the largest Gothic churches ever raised.

Nine chapels braided into a bonfire of painted onion domes on the edge of Red Square.

Twin spires of blackened limestone — six centuries in the building, briefly the tallest structure on earth.

A Renaissance colossus crowned by Michelangelo’s dome above the largest church plaza in Christendom.

Flying buttresses, rose windows and a riverine silhouette that set the grammar of French Gothic.

Gaudí’s unfinished forest of stone — naturalistic columns branching into a canopy of vaults and coloured light.