The final episode in our three-part series on the history of arches! We continue to cover plenty of ground (probably too many!), as we span another thousand years. We then gracefully spare our precious listeners from a further seven parts, ending it at the beginnings of the renaissance, neatly tying everything together with a throwback to some earlier examples. 

We pick up where we left off with early Islamic and Middle-Eastern architecture, continuing to look at how arches rapidly grew in complexity and style, with examples in Turkey, Spain, and Syria (among others), as their presence signified deep religious meaning. We then look at how interesting syncretism arose in the central mediterranean, namely Sicily, which was afflicted with a lesser-known Norman invasion, giving way to the fascinating Norman-Arab-Byzantine architecture. We then rather expectedly rip our way through western Christian architecture, making our way through Romanesque into the trecherously intoxicating waters of the Gothic, where it took us every ounce of self-restraint to keep from running long. 

Along the way we entertain a whole host of random tangents, as per usual, and end with our thoroughly-intoxicated aftershow, where we discuss the crazy story of the Abbasid Revolution, a story heavily influencial on Game of Thrones' Red Wedding, and bad jokes on the theme of Gothic.