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Early Christianity used the same artistic media as the surrounding pagan culture. These media included fresco, mosaics, sculpture, and manuscript illumination. Early Christian art used not only Roman forms but also Roman styles. Late classical style included a proportional portrayal of the human body and impressionistic presentation of space.
Although renovated and decorated in the late 6th century, the church has retained Early Christian features, including the atrium. Several Early Christian churches exist in Syria and Armenia, mostly in a ruined state. These show Roman rather than Byzantine architectural features, but have a regional character distinct from those of Rome.
Church architecture refers to the architecture of Christian buildings, such as churches, chapels, convents, seminaries, etc. It has evolved over the two thousand years of the Christian religion , partly by innovation and partly by borrowing other architectural styles as well as responding to changing beliefs, practices and local traditions.
With its current structure dating from the 7th century, it is one of the oldest churches in the city still standing today. Because of its outstanding Byzantine art and architecture, in addition to its importance in early Christianity, it is one of several monuments in Thessaloniki listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. [44]
In the first centuries of Christianity churches were either house churches in whatever houses were offered for use by their owners, or were shrines on the burial-sites of martyrs or saints, which following the usual classical practice were invariably on the (then) edges of cities—the necropolis was always outside the polis.
Brick ribs allowed for a thinner structure and facilitated the use of windows in the supporting walls, replacing the need for an oculus as a light source. Christian baptisteries and shrines were domed in the 4th century, such as the Lateran Baptistery and the likely wooden dome over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire, usually dated from 330 AD, when Constantine the Great established a new Roman capital in Byzantium, which became Constantinople, until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453.
The architecture though was initially influenced by Coptic monasticism. [14] Examples of this can be seen today in the form of rectangular dry-stone corbelled structures such as at Gallarus Oratory, Dingle and Illauntannig, Ireland. Christianity and Irish influence came to England through missionaries.