ROMANESQUE

ARCHITECTURE
 Introduction
• Following the demise of the Western Roman Empire, the
Church became most important promoter of culture.
• The monasteries built by the Benedictine Order, founded in
529, played an important role.
• Charles the Great gave the pope some independence from
the Byzantine emperor and the pope gave the Frankish ruler a
new legitimacy.
• The monumental stone building was revived under Charles
(competition with Byzantium and claim to the legacy of the
high Roman culture).

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 Content
Development history &conclusion
Characteristics

Tournai Cathedral, 12th century

 History
Origins
Politics
Religion
Monasticism

Bamberg Cathedral presents the distinctive outline of many of the

large Romanesque churches of the Germanic tradition.
Romanesque architecture was the first distinctive style to spread across Europe since
the Roman Empire.

Abbey of St. Gall

Romanesque architecture was a continuation of the Roman.
But the ancient Roman building were largely lost in most parts of Europe. So did
Roman.
In 9th century, the features of the plan for the building of the Abbey of St. Gall in
Switzerland can both be seen at Proto-Romanesque St. Michael's Church, Hildesheim,
1001–1030.
In 10th century, Romanesque architecture influenced in the north of Italy, parts of
France and in the Iberian Peninsula. This style called “First Romanesque” or “Lombard
Romanesque”.
In the year AD800, Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope in St Peter's
Basilica on Christmas Day, with an aim to re-establishing the old
Western Roman Empire.
Charlemagne‟s political successors continued to rule much of Europe,
with the separate political states were to become welded into nations, the
Kingdom of Germany giving rise to the Holy Roman Empire.

St. Peter's Basilica

The late 11th and 12th centuries saw an unprecedented growth in the
number of churches in Europe.
As monasticism spread across Europe, Romanesque churches sprang up
in Scotland, Scandinavia, Hungary, Serbia, Tunisia and so on.
Several important Romanesque churches were built in the Crusader
kingdoms.

St. Andrew's Church

 The system of monasticism
was established by the monk
Benedict in the 6th century.
In association with the
Crusades, the military orders of
the Knights were founded.
The monasteries sometimes
also functioned as cathedrals,
so Benedict had ordered that
all the arts were to be taught
and practiced in the
monasteries.
Romanesque Abbey of Senaque,
France, is surrounded by monastic
buildings of various dates
Many enormous and powerful monastery at Cluny was to have lasting
effect on the layout of other monasteries and the design of their churches.
The church of St. Sernin at Toulouse, 1080–1120, has remained intact
and demonstrates the regularity of Romanesque design with its modular
form, its massive appearance and the repetition of the simple arched
window motif.

The Abbey of Cluny today

Origins of Romanesque Architecture

Santa Maria del Naranco, Oviedo, Spain. (848) Built as a palace for Ramiro I of Asturias
Origins of Romanesque Architecture

Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome

(8th — early 12th century) has a basilical plan and reuses ancient Roman columns.
Origins of Romanesque Architecture

Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel, Aachen, C. 9th, modelled on the Byzantine church of

San Vitale, Ravenna
Origins of Romanesque Architecture

Interior of St. Michael's, Hildesheim, (1001-31) with alternating piers and columns and a
C.13th painted wooden ceiling
Origins of Romanesque Architecture

St. Michael's Church, Hildesheim has similar characteristics to the church in the Plan of
Saint Gall.
ABBEY CHURCH OF SAINT PETER (CLUNY III)
ABBEY CHURCH OF SAINT PETER (CLUNY III)
Title: Reconstruction drawing of the Abbey at Cluny, Burgundy, France. 1088–1130. View From
The East.
Combining features of contemporary Western Roman and Byzantine
buildings, Romanesque architecture is known by its massive quality, its
thick walls, round arches, sturdy piers, groin vaults, large towers and
decorative arcading.

The Cathedral of Saint-Front

Important aspects of
Romanesque architecture
1.“Romanesque” is the first international
style since the Roman Empire. Also
known as the “Norman” style in England

2.Competition among cities for the largest

churches, which continues in the Gothic
period via a “quest for height.”

3.Masonry (stone) the preferred medium.

Craft of concrete essentially lost in this
period. Rejection of wooden structures
or structural elements.
4.East end of church the focus for
liturgical services. West end for the
entrance to church.
5.Church portals as “billboards” for
scripture or elements of faith.

6.Cruciform plans. Nave and transept at

right angles to one another. Church as a
metaphor for heaven.

7. Elevation of churches based on

basilican forms, but with the nave
higher than the side aisles.
8. Interiors articulated by
repetitive series of
moldings. Heavy masonry
forms seem lighter with
applied decoration.

9. Bays divide the nave into

compartments

10.Round-headed arches
were the norm.

11.Small windows in
comparison to buildings to
withstand weight
 Characteristics
• Walls
• Piers
• Columns
• Vaults
• Buttresses
• Arcades

• Massive solidity and strength

• The first Romanesque employed rubble walls, smaller
windows and unvaulted roofs
• A greater refinement marks the second Romanesque, along
with increased use of the vault and dressed stone.
 Walls
• Massive thickness with few and comparatively
small openings

• Double shells, filled with rubble

 The building material
Brick
-- Italy, Poland, much of Germany and parts of the Netherlands
Limestone, granite and flint
-- Other areas
The building stone
--small and irregular pieces, bedded in thick mortar
 San Vittore alle Chiuse, Genga, Italy, of
Sant‟Ambrogio, Milan is
undressed stone, has a typically fortress-
constructed of bricks
like appearance.
 Piers

•In Romanesque architecture, piers were often employed to support arches.

•They were built of masonry and square or rectangular in section, generally having a
horizontal moulding representing a capital at the springing of the arch.
•Sometimes piers have vertical shafts attached to them, and may also have horizontal
mouldings at the level of base.
• Piers that occur at the intersection of two large arches, such as those under the
crossing of the nave and transept, are commonly cruciform in shape, each arch having
its own supporting rectangular pier at right angles to the other
 Columns

• Salvaged Columns
• Drum columns
• Hollow core columns
• Capitals
• Alternation
• In Italy, during this period, a great number of antique roman
columns were salvaged and reused in the interiors and on the
porticos of churches.

• The most durable of these columns are of marble and have the
stone horizontally bedded. The majority are vertically bedded and
are sometimes of a variety of colours.

• They may have retained their original roman capitals, generally of

the corinthian or roman composite style

• Salvaged columns were also used to a lesser extent in France.

 Drum columns
• In most parts of Europe, Romanesque columns were
massive, as they supported thick upper walls with
small windows, and sometimes heavy vaults. The
most common method of construction was to build
them out of stone cylinders called drums.
Santiago de Compostela has large columns constructed of drums, with attached shafts.
 Hollow core columns
• They were constructed of ashlar masonry.
• The hollow core was filled with rubble.
• These huge untapered columns are sometimes
ornamented with incised decorations.
Durham Cathedral, England, has decorated
masonry columns and the pointed high ribs.
 Capitals

• Round at the bottom

• It sits on a circular column and square at the top
• It supports the wall or arch
• Cutting a rectangular cube
• Taking the four lower corners off at an angle so that the block
was square at the top
• Octagonalat the bottom
• Manuscripts illustrations of biblical scenes and depictions of
beasts and monsters, others are lively scenes of the legends
of local saints.
 Paired columns like
those at Duratón, near
Sepúlveda, Spain, are a
feature of Romanesque
cloisters in Spain, Italy
and southern France.
The Corinthian order as used for
the portico of the Pantheon, Rome
provided a prominent model for
Festive Corinthian capitals on the richly- Renaissance and later architects,
appointed General Post Office, New York through the medium of engravings.
(McKim, Mead, and White, 1913)
 Alternation

The alternation of piers

and columns.
The most simple form that
this takes is to have a
column between each
adjoining pier.
Sometimes the columns
are in multiples of two or
three. St. Michael's, Hildesheim has
alternating piers and columns.
 Vaults

• Barrel vault
• Groin Vault
• Ribbed Vault
• Pointed arched vault
 Barrel vault
• A tunnel vault or a wagon vault,
• The simplest type of vaulted roof is the barrel vault in
which a single arched surface extends from wall to wall, the
length of the space to be vaulted,
• The barrel vault generally required the support of solid
walls, or walls in which the windows are very small.
The Cloisters, New York City
Nave of Lisbon Cathedral with a barrel vaulted soffit. Note the absence of clerestory windows, all of the light
being provided by the Rose window at one end of the vault.
• Groin Vault: produced by the intersection at right
angles of two barrel /tunnel vaults.
 • Square in plan and is
constructed of two barrel
vaults intersecting at right
angles.
• Groin vaults are frequently
separated by transverse
arched ribs of low profile.

The aisle of the Abbey Church at Mozac has a groin

vault supported on transverse arches.
• Rib Vault: A masonry vault with a relatively thin web and set
within a framework of ribs
• In ribbed vaults, not only are
there ribs spanning the
vaulted area transversely, but
each vaulted bay has
diagonal ribs.

• In a ribbed vault, the ribs are

the structural members, and
the spaces between them
can be filled with lighter,
non-structural material.
Ribbed vault
The ribbed vaults at the Saint-Etienne, Caen, span two bays of the nave.
 Pointed Arched vault
• Late in the Romanesque period another
solution came into use for regulating the height
of diagonal and transverse ribs.

• Use arches of the same diameter for both

horizontal and transverse ribs, causing the
transverse ribs to meet at a point.
Pointed barrel vault showing Interior of Durham Cathedral
direction of lateral forces.
 Buttresses
• Because of the massive nature of Romanesque walls, buttresses are not a
highly significant feature, as they are in Gothic architecture.

• Romanesque buttresses are generally of flat square profile and do not

project a great deal beyond the wall. In the case of aisled churches, barrel
vaults, or half-barrel vaults over the aisles helped to buttress the nave, if it
was vaulted.

• In the cases where half-barrel vaults were used, they effectively became
like flying buttresses.
 Castle Rising, England, shows flat buttresses and
reinforcing at the corners of the building typical in both castles and churches.
 Arcades

• An arcade is a row of arches, supported on piers or columns.

• They occur in the interior of large churches, separating the nave from the
aisles, and in large secular interiors spaces, such as the great hall of a
castle, supporting the timbers of a roof or upper floor.

• Arcades also occur in cloisters and atriums, enclosing an open space.

• Arcades can occur in storeys or stages. While the arcade of a cloister is

typically of a single stage, the arcade that divides the nave and aisles in a
church is typically of two stages, with a third stage of window openings
known as the clerestory rising above them.
The atrium and arcaded of Saint„ Ambrogio, Milan, Italy,
 Romanesque in Italy
• The campanile, freestanding bell tower, the cathedral of Pisa
and the tower built in the Romanesque style.
• This spectacular irregularity has tended to obscure the fact
that it is also a magnificent example of Romanesque
architecture and decoration.
• Begun in 1173, the eight-story round tower is 55 m tall and 16
m in diameter at the base.
• By 1301 six stories were complete, and the tower was finished
about 1350.
• Italian physicist Galileo conducted his famous experiments
with gravity and the relative speed of falling objects from the
top storey of the tower.

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Leaning Tower, (La Torre Pendente)
Pisa Cathedral

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 Romanesque in France
• The greatest monastic Romanesque church, Cluny III (1088-
1121), did not survive the French Revolution but has been
reconstructed in drawings.
• Double-aisled church almost 137 m long, with 15 small
chapels in transepts and ambulatory.
• Its design influenced Romanesque and Gothic churches in
Burgundy and beyond.
• Splendid Romanesque churches at Autun (1120-1132), Paray-
le-Monial (1100), Périgueux (1120), Conques (1050), Moissac
(1120), Clermont-Ferrand (1262).

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ABBEY CHURCH OF SAINT PETER (CLUNY III)
Autun Cathedral, France, is much simpler in plan, based on square modules rather than
rectangular. It has a tri-apsidal east end, and shallow buttresses supporting the vaults.
Abbey Church, Fontenay, 1139-47

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 Romanesque in England
• Major Romanesque buildings: Cathedrals of
Canterbury, Durham, Gloucester, Rochester
Cathedral and Southwell.
• The Romanesque period in English architecture can
be roughly dated to the years 1066-1180. The style is
also known as “Norman”.
• The Norman invaders (William the Conqueror, 1066)
of England introduced their own style of building into
their new island domain.

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Durham Cathedral Cloister
Baptisteries often occur in Italy as a free standing structure, associated with a
cathedral. They are generally octagonal or circular and domed. The interior may be
arcaded on several levels as at Pisa Cathedral. Other notable Romanesque baptisteries
is Parma Cathedral, remarkable for its galleried exterior, and the polychrome Baptistery
of San Giovanni of Florence Cathedral, with vault mosaics of the 13th century including
Christ in Majesty, possibly the work of the almost legendary Coppo di Marcovaldo.

Interior of a Baptistery
 1063 to 1350
Santa Maria Cathedral
Secular Architecture: Romanesque Architecture

Church Towers
•Towers were an important feature of Romanesque churches and a great number of
them are still standing.
•They take a variety of forms: square, circular and octagonal, and are positioned
differently in relation to the church building in different countries.
•In northern France, two large towers, such as those at Caen, were to become an
integral part of the facade of any large abbey or cathedral.
•In central and southern France this is more variable and large churches may have one
tower or a central tower.
• Large churches of Spain and Portugal usually have two towers.
The octagonal crossing tower of the Abbey The Leaning Tower of Pisa with its
church at Cluny influenced the building of encircling arcades is the best known (and
other polygonal crossing towers in France, most richly decorated) of the many circular
Spain and Germany. towers found in Italy.
Romanesque Castles

After churches and the monastic buildings with which they are often associated, castles
are the most numerous type of building of the period. While most are in ruins through the
action of war and politics, others, like William the Conqueror's White Tower within
the Tower of London have remained almost intact.
Thank You…