4000 BC Passage grave on Île Longue
A passage grave with a superb corbelled dome is constructed on the Île Longue off the southern coast of Brittany

20 Pont du Gard
The Romans construct the massive Pont du Gard to bring water to the city of Nîmes

1130 Perfection of Romanesque at Vézelay
The full flowering of the Romanesque style is seen in the nave of the abbey church at Vézelay, in France

1144 Gothic style in France
The new abbey church of St Denis is consecrated near Paris, introducing the style of architecture later known as Gothic

1243 Sainte Chapelle to house relic
Construction begins in Paris on the Sainte Chapelle, designed to house relics acquired by Louis IX, the king of France

1527 Francis I at Fontainebleau
Francis I begins to transform Fontainebleau into a palace, employing artists who establish the mannerist school of Fontainebleau

1664 Leading team head-hunted for Versailles
Louis XIV commissions a well-established team of designers to provide him with a spectacular palace and garden at Versailles

1920 Le Corbusier's L'Esprit Nouveau
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret launches and edits a radical architectural journal, L'Esprit Nouveau

1920 Jeanneret adopts a pseudonym
The Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret adopts the simpler Le Corbusier as a pseudonym in L'Esprit Nouveau

1921 Le Corbusier in partnership with cousin
The Swiss architect Le Corbusier begins a 20-year partnership with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret

1923 Le Corbusier's New Architecture
Le Corbusier publishes an influential collection of his articles under the title Towards a New Architecture

1926 Loos builds for dadaist poet
The Austrian architect Adolf Loos builds a house in Paris for the Romanian dadaist poet Tristan Tzara

1928 Architects establish CIAM
Le Corbusier and other modernist architects set up the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM)

1945 Brutalism in architecture
Le Corbusier's use of béton brut (raw concrete) introduces Brutalism

1948 Le Corbusier's Modulor
Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier introduces the Modulor, an architectural unit based on the Golden Section

1951 Matisse's chapel at Vence
Henri Matisse completes the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, with every detail designed by himself

1952 Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation
Le Corbusier's completes his most massive modernist development, the Unité d'Habitation at Marseilles

1954 Corbusier church at Ronchamp
Le Corbusier completes the reinforced-concrete pilgrimage church of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp

1977 Pompidou Centre
The Pompidou Centre, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, opens in Paris

1993 Pei's pyramid for the Louvre
US architect Ieoh Ming Pei completes his underground extension of the Louvre, surmounted by a glass pyramid