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,
History of the world's tallest buildings to be tall, but its true height is not known. For thousands of years, the Great Pyramid in Egypt was the tallest "structure" in the world, but the Great Pyramid is not considered a building since it is not habitable. The earliest structures now known to be the tallest in the world were the Egyptian pyramids, with the Great Pyramid of Giza, at an original height of , being the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years, until the construction of Lincoln Cathedral in 1300. From then until the completion of the Washington Monument (capped in 1884)