Here, too, upon the north stood the great abbey church, three hundred and thirty-five feet long, a cruciform building consisting of nave with two aisles, central tower, transepts with aisles, chancel with circular apse and chapels, now marked out in chalk upon the grass.

He intended to front the mass of the edifice with a majestic colonnade, giving externally to one limb of the Greek cross a rectangular salience corresponding to its three semicircular apses.

Bramante's original design had been to construct the church in the form of a Greek cross, with four large semi-circular apses.

He found the velocity greater at the nearer apse, so that the time over an equal arc at either apse was proportional to the distance.

An octagonal chamber is transformed within into a pentagonal apse by the simple device of resting the three western sides on piers, and thus throwing it into one building with the retrochoir, thereby considerably enhancing the general artistic effect.

The charming Romanesque apse, with its three narrow windows, its blind arcade, the capitals ornamented with the acanthus, the row of fantastic modillions above carried all round the building, their sculpture exhibiting the strangest variety of ideasheads of men, women, beasts, birds, and fabulous monsters; and then the venerable portal, with its elaborate bas-relief of the Last Judgment, furnish much matter for reflection and study.

The central piers were left in their places; the three terminal apses of the choir and transepts were strengthened, simplified, reduced to commonplace.

The eastern apse, too, has been replaced by a square end.

It has an elegant apse, decorated in good taste; but the edifice having received various patchings and decorations at the time of the Renaissance, the uniformity of style has been spoilt.