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Romanesque architecture [1] is an architectural style of medieval Europe that was predominant in the 11th and 12th centuries. [2] The style eventually developed into the Gothic style with the shape of the arches providing a simple distinction: the Romanesque is characterized by semicircular arches, while the Gothic is marked by the pointed arches.
Like many early Gothic cathedrals, it retained some romanesque features, including tribunes over the side aisles, use of both round and pointed arches, and a two-story chapel on each arm of the transept. Like most early Gothic churches, it was not exceptionally high, but it was exceptionally long, with eleven bays in the nave, and ten in the choir.
In Denmark such churches in the Romanesque style are much more numerous. In parts of Europe there are also round tower-like churches of the Romanesque period but they are generally vernacular architecture and of small scale. Others, like Rotunda of St Martin at Vyšehrad in the Czech Republic are finely detailed.
The most distinctive characteristic of large Romanesque churches is the prevalence of apses at both ends of the church, as on 9th-century Plan of St. Gall, the earliest example being at Gernrode Abbey. Two reasons are suggested: that the bishop presided at one end and the abbot at the other, or that the western apse served as a baptistery.
In the Île-de-France, cathedral towers followed the Romanesque tradition of two identical towers, one on either side of the portals. The west front of the Saint-Denis, became the model for the early Gothic cathedrals and High Gothic cathedrals in northern France, including Notre-Dame de Paris, Reims Cathedral, and Amiens Cathedral. [80]
Many Gothic cathedrals, like Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres, were built on the sites of Romanesque cathedrals, and often used the same foundations and crypt. In Romanesque times the crypt was used to keep sacred relics, and often had its own chapels and, as in the 11th-century crypt of the first Chartres Cathedral, a deep well. The Romanesque ...
Siena Cathedral (1215–1263), which was begun in the mid-13th century, is another major landmark church of early Italian Gothic. Its interior is a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque elements, such as the domed crossing tower, and horizontal banding of the interior columns with polychrome marble.
From the Early Christianity to the present, the most significant objects of transformation for Christian architecture and design were the great churches of Byzantium, the Romanesque abbey churches, Gothic cathedrals and Renaissance basilicas with its emphasis on harmony. These large, often ornate and architecturally prestigious buildings were ...