romanesque architecture, romanesque style, expansion, characteristics, typology, romanesque furniture, romanesque in europe, pilgrim route

1. ROMANESQUE
ARCHITECTURE
1000 – 1200 A.D.

2. INDEX
• Romanesque architecture
• Romanesque style
• Introduction
• Expansion
• Characteristics
• Typology
• Romanesque furniture
• Town houses
• Romanesque in different countries

3. INTRODUCTION
• This art appeared during the Middle
Age
• It is the first style that can be found all
over Europe, even when regional
differences
• The expansion of the style was linked
to the pilgrimages, mainly to Santiago.

4. INTRODUCTION
• Romanesque art developed thanks to a series of causes:
• The end of Barbarian invasions
• The decomposition of Cordoba’s caliphate
• The establishment of peace in the Christian world, with the
development of the cities, commerce and industry.

5. WHAT IS ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE ?
• Inspired by roman architecture.
• Round arches, stone materials, and the basilica-style plan similar to roman
• Romanesque style are far more complex
• Influenced by Visigoth, Carolingian, byzantine, and Islamic architecture.
• Romanesque architecture period 1000 – 1150 (not precisely)
• At its high between 1075 and 1125.

6. EXPANSION
•The factors of the expansion of
Romanesque arte were:
• Development of feudal system,
that demanded works (castles)
• The expansion of religious orders
(Benedictines), expanded the
monasteries
• The pilgrimage routes

7. ROMANESQUE STYLE
• Combination of contemporary western roman and
byzantine buildings
• Known for its massive quality, thick walls, round arches,
sturdy piers, groin vaults, large towers and decorative
arcading.
• Every building has clearly defined forms, very regular and
symmetrical plan
• So that overall appearance is one of simplicity when
compared with the gothic buildings that were to follow.
• The style can be identified right across the Europe,
despite regional characteristics and different materials.

8. CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE
• Harmonious proportions
• Stone barrel vaults or groin vault
• Thick and heavy walls
• Thick and heavy pillars
• Round arches supporting to the roof
• Round “blind arches” used extensively for
decoration inside and out(especially exteriors)

9. CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE
• A transept
• An apse
• An ambulatory
• Multiple towers, usually at the west end and over the transept
crossing
• Sculptured decoration on portals, capitals and other surface
• Painting decoration throughout the interior

10. ROMANESQUE – TO SUM UP
• Use of roman round arch, adoption of the major forms of antique Roman vaulting(contained, strong,
weight and sober style)
• Most Romanesque churches retained the basic plan of the early Christian basilica
• European movement in architecture (10-12th centuries), especially in Italy, France, England and
Germany

11. TYPOLOGIES
• There are three main architectonical typologies:
Churches Monasteries Castles

12. MONASTERY
• It was designed as a microcosm, as the city of
God
• They had several dependencies:
• Church
• Cloister
• Chapter room
• Abbot’s house
• Monks/ nuns rooms
• Refectory
• Hospital

13. CHURCH
• It was the main building
• It symbolized God’s kingdom
• The holiest part was the apse
• It had cross shape
• Symbolism was important:
• Circular parts reflect perfection so they were linked
to God
• Squared parts are related to the human.

14. CHURCH
• Characteristics:
• Monumental, trying to imitate the
Roman models in the Pilgrimage
churches
• Small in country churches
• They were designed for advertising
Catholic church
• They were lasting, made of stone
• Plans could be:
• Latin cross
• Polygonal
• Basilical

15. CHURCH
•Parts of the plan

16. CHURCH
•Parts from the outside

17. CHURCH
• Elevation:
• The church is covered by
stoned vaults
• Wall are thick
• They need strong
buttresses
• Foundations are strong
• Few windows

18. CHURCH
• Interior elevation: it consists of three levels:
• First floor with columns or cross-shaped pillars
• Second floor with the tribune (corridor over
looking the nave, over the aisles)
• Clerestory: area of windows opening to the
outside.
Column
Pillar
Tribune
Column
Tribune
Clerestory

19. CHURCH
Barrel vault: it was
used mainly to cover
the central nave
Groin vault was
common in aisles and
ambulatory
Dome: spherical were used
in apses. The central could
stand on pendentives or
squinches

20. CASTLE
• Castles were defensive constructions
• They were fortified for providing shelter
• The wall was one of the essential elements
• They tend to be build in stepped areas, easier to
defend.

21. ROMANESQUE FURNITURE

22. ROMANESQUE FURNITURE
• Romanesque furniture consisted mostly of pieces
designed and constructed for church use.
• Altars, canopies, shrines, silver chalices, throne
chairs, caskets, and tapestry were all common
Romanesque furniture pieces.

23. ROMANESQUE FURNITURE
• Since the common people of this era
lived very simply, Romanesque
furniture was predominantly designed
for churches and for the aristocracy.
The poorer classes would make do with
a rough bed, or just a mattress of straw
on the ground, perhaps a storage chest
or two, and a board supported by tree
trunks that served as a dining table.

24. ROMANESQUE FURNITURE
•Churches
•decorated with either carvings or paintings in
an imitation of the old roman furniture styles.
•Arches and curves were the design theme,
both in the shape of the item itself, and the
carved paneling and decoration.
•Simple animal and plant forms were also used
in carving.
• Many items were brightly painted to lighten up
gloomy interiors.

25. ROMANESQUE FURNITURE
• Pictures of Romanesque furniture show
carved chests, simple stools, benches and
trestle tables, and roughly carved, pillared
bedsteads.
• Chairs as we know them, with back and arm
rests, were mainly the prerogative of
important personages such as bishops and
overlords.
• Such chairs were often heavily decorated
with carving, painting and inlays, and were
a symbol of power.

26. ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE

27. THE BUILDING MATERIAL USED IN ROMANESQUE
ARCHITECTURE
• Brick
• Italy, Poland, much of Germany and parts of Netherland
• Limestone, granite
• Other areas
• The building stone
• Small and irregular pieces, bedded in thick mortar

28. BUILDING MATERIAL AND METHODS
• Romanesque buildings ware made of people were still not very good
at building stone roofs yet.
• It they did have stone roofs, the walls had to be very thick in order to
hold up the roofs, and there couldn’t be very many windows either,
so Romanesque buildings were often very heavy and dark inside.

29. PIERS
• Support arches at the intersection of two large arches
• Cruciform in shape masonry and square or rectangular in
section
• Horizontal moulding
• Vertical shafts, horizontal moldings at the level of base
• Highly complex form
• Half segment of large hollow-core column
• A clustered group of smaller shafts

30. COLUMNS
• Salvaged columns
• Drum columns
• Hollow core columns
• Capitals
• Alternation

31. COLUMNS
• 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 variety of colors.
• They may have retained their original roman capitals, generally of the corinthan or roman composite
style
• Salvaged columns were also used to a lesser extern in France.

32. DRUM COLUMN
• 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.

33. HOLLOW CORE COLUMNS
• They were constructed of ashlar masonry
• The hollow core was filled with rubble
• These huge untampered columns are
sometimes ornamented with incised
decorations.

34. CAPITALS
• Round at bottom
• It sits on a circular column and square at the
top
• It support the wall or arch
• Octagonal at the bottom
• Manuscripts at the illustrations of biblical
scenes and depictions of beats and monsters,
others are lively scenes of the legends of local
saints

35. CAPITALS

36. 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

37. VAULTS
• Barrel vault
• Groin vault
• Ribbed vault
• Pointed arched vault

38. BARREL VAULT
• A tunnel vault or a wagon vault,
• The simplest style
• A single arched surface extends from wall to wall
• The length of the space to be vaulted
• Required support of solid walls, or windows which have small windows.

40. GROIN VAULTS
• A groin vault or groined vault produced by the
intersection at right angle of two barrel vaults.
• The word groin refers to the edge between the
intersecting vaults; cf. ribbed vault.
• Sometimes the arches of groin vaults are pointed
instead of round.
• In comparison to barrel vault, a groin vault provides
good economies of material
• The thrust is concentrated along the groins or arrises
(the four diagonal edges formed along the points
where the barrel vault intersect), so the vault need only
be abutted at its four corners.

41. GROIN VAULT
• For the less visible and smaller vaults
• Square in plan
• Groin vaults are frequently separated by
transverse arched
• Ribs of low profile

43. RIB VAULT
• 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.

44. • Because Romanesque arches are nearly always semi-circular, the structural and design problem
inherent in the ribbed vault is that the diagonal span is larger and therefore higher than the transverse
span.

45. RIBBED VAULT
• One was to have the center point where the diagonal
ribs met as the highest point, with the infill of all the
surfaces sloping upwards towards it, in a domical
manner.

46. 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

47. ROMANESQUE TOWN HOUSES

48. TOWN HOUSES

49. TOWN HOUSES

50. TOWN HOUSES

51. ROMANESQUE IN FRANCE
• It was the original region of Romanesque art
• It appeared in Cluny’s abbey
• From there it expanded thanks to the pilgrimage routes,
specially to Santiago in Spain.

52. ROMANESQUE IN FRANCE
Cluny Sanite Magdalena, Vezelay

53. ROMANESQUE IN ITALY
Saint Ambroggio, Milan Saint Miniato, Florence

54. LEANING TOWER OF PISA
• The tower of Pisa is the bell tower of the cathedral
• It was started constructed in 1173 and continued for about 200 years
• Architect is believed to be Giovanni di simone
• In the past it is widely believed that the inclination of the tower was the part of the project ever since
its beginning, but now we know that it is not so.
• The tower was designed to be “vertical”, and started to incline during its construction.

56. ROMANESQUE IN ITALY
Cefalu, Sicily
Pisa Cathedral, in Tuscany, presents
three separate buildings.

57. ROMANESQUE IN GERMANY
Laach Worms

58. ROMANESQUE IN ENGLAND
Tower of London

59. Durham cathedral

60. ROMANESQUE IN SPAIN

61. ROMANESQUE IN SPAIN
• Pilgrims route to Santiago was an important route for Romanesque Art expansion.

62. ROMANESQUE IN SPAIN

63. ROMANESQUE IN SPAIN
Santiago cathedral

64. ROMANESQUE IN SPAIN
Santiago cathedral

65. CONCLUSION
Modern architecture affected from Romanesque architecture
A new kind of society planning was started
A large influence of Romanesque in architecture today

66. THE END