Rosslyn Chapel, Roslin, Gothic chapel in Midlothian, Scotland
Rosslyn Chapel, the Collegiate Chapel of Saint Matthew, stands on a small hill above Roslin Glen. Only the choir and the retro-chapel, or Lady chapel, were built; the planned nave and transepts were abandoned, though 19th-century records noted their foundations stretching 90 feet. Inside, fourteen pillars form an arcade of twelve pointed arches on three sides of the nave.
Construction began on 20 September 1456, after Rome granted William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness, a founding charter for a collegiate chapel in 1446, the date often wrongly given for the building itself. Catholic worship ended at the Reformation of 1560 and the altars were destroyed in 1592. Queen Victoria's 1842 visit led to David Bryce's restoration and rededication on 22 April 1862.
The chapel is dedicated to Saint Matthew the Evangelist and was founded as a collegiate church with four to six ordained canons and two boy choristers, who sang plainsong and polyphony through the day and night. The Apprentice Pillar carries a legend of a mason who killed his apprentice in envy, was hanged, and forced the chapel's reconsecration.
The chapel stands on a small hill above Roslin Glen, about seven miles south of Edinburgh. Photography and video are forbidden inside since 2008; commercially produced photos are sold in the shop. A visitor centre opened in July 2011 with new lighting and heating.
The cubes on the columns contain what some researchers interpret as an encoded melody, known as the Rosslyn Motet. This interpretation connects stonework with musical elements from the fifteenth century.
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