Old St Paul's Cathedral in length including the portico, and across the transepts, and Winchester Cathedral, the longest remaining medieval church, is long and across the transepts. The cathedral had one of Europe's tallest church spires, the height of which is traditionally given as , surpassing all but Lincoln Cathedral. The King's Surveyor, Christopher Wren (1632–1723), judged that an overestimate and gave . William Benham noted that the cathedral probably "resembled in general outline that of Salisbury, but it was a hundred feet longer, and the spire was sixty or eighty feet higher. The tower was open internally as far as the base of
Strasbourg Cathedral together represent some of the earliest uses of architectural drawing. The work of Professor Robert O. Bork of the University of Iowa suggests that the design of the Strasbourg façade, while seeming almost random in its complexity, can be constructed using a series of rotated octagons. The north tower, completed in 1439, was the world's tallest building from 1647 (when the spire of St. Mary's church, Stralsund burnt down) until 1874 (when the tower of St. Nikolai's Church in Hamburg was completed). The planned south tower was never built and as a result, with its characteristic asymmetrical form, the cathedral