Stone beasts that spit the rain off the roof, and their cousins who only stand guard. Drawn by math, under the sky over Paris right now.
Tap the gargoyle. Tap the sky for rain.
1,142dragon-head spouts on the Forbidden City's terracesBeijing
570Patan's Manga Hiti, the oldest working stone spout on recordCE, still running
1724London's Building Act requires downpipes on new housesthe gargoyle retires
102lion-head spouts on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia39 survive
1992an astronaut joins Salamanca's cathedralSpain
Gargoyle or grotesque?
A gargoyle is a drain: water goes in at the roof and out of its mouth. A carved creature that carries no water is a grotesque, or on Notre-Dame, a chimera. Look, guess, then see.
Gargoyle
A spout carved as a creature. A groove or pipe runs through it and the water leaves by the mouth.
Grotesque
Any odd carved figure, human or beast, that carries no water. The word comes from the Italian grotta.
Chimera
The name for the grotesques on Notre-Dame's upper gallery, after the many-part monster of Greek myth.
Cousins
Guardians at doors and on ridges elsewhere: Thai yaksha and singha, Chinese ridge beasts, Japanese ogre tiles, Kala faces.
Throw it clear
Water that runs down a wall washes out the mortar between the stones. A gargoyle sticks out so the water falls free. Make the spout longer or shorter, make it rain harder, and watch where the water lands.
water inQ = rain × 40 m²
The roof gathers the rain falling on 40 square metres and sends it down one spout.
at the lipv = √(g·d), d = (q²/g)^⅓
Water leaving the end of an open channel flows at its critical depth d. Here q is the flow per metre of a 12 cm groove.
fallingx = v × √(2h/g)
From 10 m up, the water falls for about 1.4 seconds. In that time it drifts out x metres more.
Even in a downpour the water leaves the lip slowly, well under a metre a second, and falls nearly straight down. The spout's length does most of the work, so medieval gargoyles were long. Builders also used many of them: Viollet-le-Duc wrote that splitting the roof's water into many falls left each one a thin thread that could not harm the walls. The first gargoyles appeared around 1220 at Laon; Paris used them everywhere by about 1240. In 1724 London's Building Act required downpipes on new houses.
A home-made gargoyle on a rain gutter in Germany, in a downpour. 5snake5 · CC0
Notre-Dame de Paris
A drain with teeth
Rain runs down channels on the flying buttresses, along a groove in the gargoyle's back, and out of its mouth, as far from the walls as it will go.
Rouen, in Normandy, tells where the first gargoyle came from. Step through the story.
Romanus was bishop of Rouen in the 630s; the dragon first appears in writing in 1394. From about the 12th century until 1790, the chapter of Rouen freed one condemned prisoner every Ascension Day, the privilège de saint Romain, in memory of the man who went with him.
Clément Boulanger's painting of the procession of the Gargouille in Rouen. Clément Boulanger · Public domain
Around the world
Wherever people built roofs that shed rain or doors worth guarding, carved creatures moved in. The pins show rain falling there right now. Tap a pin, then tap any drawing.
It bites the end of the roof ridge, a charm against fire. The one on the Hall of Supreme Harmony stands 3.4 m and weighs about 4.3 tonnes. Legend says the sword in its back pins it there.
Twelve giants from the Ramakien, each about 5 m tall, guard Wat Phra Kaew's gates. At Wat Arun, green Thotsakan and white Sahatsadecha guard the ordination hall.
The three great halls of the Forbidden City stand on a three-tier terrace of white marble, 8.13 metres high. Under the balustrades sit dragon heads with a hole through each mouth: 1,142 of them, by the Palace Museum's count. In a heavy storm all of them spout at once.
Rain on the terraces: the dragons are spitting.
People in Beijing call it 千龙吐水, a thousand dragons spitting water. Each head is a chi, a hornless dragon, one of the dragon's nine sons, said to hold great quantities of water in its belly. The terrace slopes outward a little so the rain finds the mouths. Across town, the Temple of Heaven's three tiers carry 99 spouts each: clouds on the lowest, phoenixes in the middle, dragons on top.
The face that ate itself
A Hindu story, as Heinrich Zimmer retold it: the demon Rahu came to make a demand of Shiva. Shiva opened his third eye and a lion-headed creature sprang out, starving. Rahu begged for mercy and was spared, which left the creature nothing to eat, so Shiva told it to eat itself. It ate from the tail up until only the face was left. Shiva named it Kirtimukha, face of glory, and set it over the doors of temples.
The same face travelled east with Hindu and Buddhist builders. On Khmer lintels it is Kala, all-devouring time: a great upper jaw, no lower jaw, garlands and vines pouring from its mouth. In Thai it is หน้ากาล, na kan, the one who swallows everything, even itself. On Java the Kala head glares over temple doors with bulging eyes and curved fangs.
Manga Hiti, Patan
Still running
Built in 570. People still come to drink, wash and fill their pots.
In the Kathmandu Valley, carved stone spouts called hiti (in Newar) or dhunge dhara (in Nepali, stone faucet) sit at the bottom of stepped pits, fed from underground. Patan's Manga Hiti, built in 570, still runs; its water serves the Krishna Mandir every day. Press and hold to fill a pot.
Press and hold the picture.
Most spouts are a makara: a crocodile's snout, an elephant's trunk, a boar's tusks and ears, a peacock's tail, its body forming the open channel. In a 2019 survey, 224 of the valley's spouts on record still gave water. A European gargoyle throws water away from a building; a hiti brings it to people.
Carve one
Every gargoyle was a block of stone first. Pick one and chip it out. Sound on for the chisel.
At Gloucester Cathedral the master mason first models the figure full size in clay, and the masons copy it into the stone with a pointing machine, then by eye. A trough is cut along the back so the water leaves by the mouth. Each of Paisley Abbey's twelve new gargoyles took about four weeks; one grotesque at York Minster took fourteen.
Find the astronaut
In 1992 the Puerta de Ramos of Salamanca's New Cathedral was restored for the next year's Las Edades del Hombre exhibition, and the stonemason Miguel Romero carved a few things of his own time among the old ones: an astronaut, and nearby a smiling dragon with a three-scoop ice cream. Find both.
Tap the carving you think it is.
Galerie des Chimères
Le Stryge
Chin on its hands above Paris since the 1850s. It carries no water: a chimera, not a gargoyle.
Washington National Cathedral asked children, through National Geographic World, to design a grotesque; about 1,400 entered from 16 countries. Christopher Rader, 13, drew Darth Vader and was one of three runners-up. Jay Hall Carpenter modelled it in clay and Patrick J. Plunkett carved it high on the northwest tower, where it takes binoculars to find.
Washington, 1986
An umbrella
The grand prize went to Alison Garner, 12, for a toothy man holding an umbrella. She had read that rainwater drains out of the mouths of gargoyles, so she gave her grotesque an umbrella for protection.
David Lindsay carved twelve new gargoyles for the abbey's roof, about four weeks each, every one with a channel for water and drawn from 20th-century culture. One looks like the creature from Alien. A photo of it went round the world in 2013.
A small grotesque sits high in the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral. Its legend, put into verse in 1897: the devil and the wind came to the minster; the devil went in to chat with the Dean, and the wind has been waiting outside ever since.
Archbishop de Noailles had the roof altered and lead gutters fitted, and most of the medieval gargoyles came down. Those there today are mostly from the 19th-century restoration.
Paris, 1848–1856
The chimeras arrive
Viollet-le-Duc designed the chimeras of the upper gallery himself, and a team of sculptors, Victor Pyanet chief among them, carved them. They are Gothic Revival, not medieval.
Margaret Bourke-White photographed the Chrysler Building from its scaffolding and was taken with the steel eagle heads. Its ornaments are Nirosta, an 18-8 stainless steel, the first use of that steel in an American building.
King Chulalongkorn of Siam took eight cartloads of sculpture from Borobudur, with the colonial government's consent: two lions, kala heads, a guardian and one waterspout among them. Some are on show in Bangkok.
A survey on 6 January 1937 found 58 of the 110 gold scales gone from the male shachihoko. The originals burned in the air raid of 14 May 1945; the pair now on the keep went up when it was rebuilt in 1959. The male is 2.62 m tall and carries 44.69 kg of gold.
Gloucester, 2020
A cheese roller
Gloucester Cathedral's six new working gargoyles show a rugby player, a jockey, a suffragette, a miner, a sheep shearer and a cheese roller.
London, 1240
Downpipes, early
Lead downpipes were already in use on the Tower of London in 1240, to keep spray off its whitewashed walls.
Its names
Most languages name it for the water. English and French name it for the throat.
gargouilleFrench from garg-, the sound of gurgling, and goule, a beast's mouth; written gargoule in 1294
babewynMiddle English from Italian babbuino, baboon: once used for gargoyles and chimeras alike
gárgolaSpanish from the French; Spanish garganta, throat, shares the root
doccioneItalian a protruding gutter
WasserspeierGerman water-spitter
waterspuwerDutch water-spitter
grottescaItalian of the cave: painting found in the buried rooms of Nero's Golden House
螭首Chinese chīshǒu, hornless-dragon head
鸱吻Chinese chīwěn, the ridge beast
鬼瓦Japanese onigawara, ogre tile
鯱Japanese shachi, the tiger-carp
ढुङ्गे धाराNepali dhunge dhara, stone faucet
प्रणालSanskrit praṇāla, a temple's water outlet; the makara-praṇāla is India's gargoyle
कीर्तिमुखSanskrit kīrtimukha, face of glory
ปนาลีThai panali, the Thai word for a gargoyle, from praṇāla
ตัวสำรอกThai tua samrok, the one that spits out: a name for the makara
หน้ากาลThai na kan, the face of Kala
Grottesche painted by Raphael's workshop in the Vatican Loggia. Raffaello e bottega · Public domain
APK · CC BY 4.0Washington, 1984–1986
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