Spire spires were an astounding architectural innovation, beginning with the early fourteenth-century spire at Freiburg Minster, in which the pierced stonework was held together by iron cramps. The openwork spire, according to Robert Bork, represents a "radical but logical extension of the Gothic tendency towards skeletal structure." The organic skeleton of Antoni Gaudi's phenomenal spires at the Sagrada Família in Barcelona represent an outgrowth of this Gothic tendency. Designed and begun by Gaudi in 1884, they were not completed until the 20th century. In England, "spire" immediately brings to mind Salisbury Cathedral. Its 403-foot (123-m) spire, built between 1320 and 1380,
Corbeil Cathedral opened in 1995, superseding Saint Spire as the cathedral of the diocese. Corbeil Cathedral Corbeil Cathedral () is a Roman Catholic church located in the town of Corbeil-Essonnes, France. It was the interim cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Évry–Corbeil-Essonnes. The bishop's seat was established at the foundation of the new diocese in 1966 in the parish church of Saint Spire in Corbeil, which thus became the cathedral. The facilities were however inadequate for the needs of an episcopal administration, and the new town of Évry was chosen as a better-situated new episcopal centre, although entirely lacking in any