Byzantine or Romanesque? Domes and Round Arches

Both styles have round arches and thick walls, but they were built in different parts of Europe and around different ideas. A Byzantine church gathers around a great dome on pendentives, is plain brick on the outside and covered in mosaic on a gold ground inside. It belongs to the Eastern Roman Empire, from the 6th century to 1453. A Romanesque church is a long basilica with towers, barrel or groin vaults and sculpted portals, and it belongs to Western Europe around 1000–1200. Compare Hagia Sophia in Istanbul with Speyer Cathedral or Lund Cathedral, and you will see the difference.

Facts

Why they are confused

Both styles grew out of the Roman Empire. When the empire was divided, the eastern half continued with Constantinople as its capital and Greek as its language, and Byzantine architecture developed there. In the West the empire fell, and when Europe around the year 1000 began once more to build on a large scale in stone, the builders took the Roman arch and vault as their model. The name Romanesque means roughly in the Roman manner.

For that reason both styles have the round arch, thick walls and a heavy, closed impression from outside. Both are medieval and almost always churches. But they were built for different forms of worship, by different societies and with different techniques, and once you know what to look for they are easy to tell apart.

The plan: the dome or the nave

The surest difference is the plan. A Byzantine church gathers around its centre. San Vitale in Ravenna, consecrated in 547, is an octagon with an ambulatory around the central space. Hagia Sophia, 532–537, combines the round centre with a long space: a great dome on four pendentives and half-domes to the east and west. From the 9th century the cross-in-square church became the usual type, a Greek cross within a square with a dome over the crossing, as at Hosios Loukas in Greece.

A Romanesque church, by contrast, is a basilica: a tall nave with lower aisles, a transept and a chancel ending in a semicircular apse, often with a crypt below. The space leads from the west towards the altar in the east. On the outside rise towers, preferably in pairs in the west and sometimes at the crossing. The drawing of the basilica below shows the parts, and the dome's technique is explained in the guide to the pendentive.

In short: a large dome in the middle and no tall towers suggest Byzantine style. A long nave and heavy towers suggest Romanesque.

The walls: mosaic or sculpture

The exterior of a Byzantine church is often unassuming, with brick laid in thick joints of lime mortar, often in bands alternating with stone. It is the inside that is the work. The walls were clad below with marble slabs, sawn and folded so that the veining forms patterns, and above with mosaics of small pieces of glass, where the gold pieces have gold leaf fused into the glass. The images follow a fixed order: Christ in the dome, the Mother of God in the apse, the Evangelists on the pendentives. The capitals are baskets of deeply pierced foliage.

A Romanesque church carries its message on the outside. The portals have stepped, recessed sides with columns, and in the tympanum above the door there is often Christ in Majesty or the Last Judgement. The capitals are cubic or sculpted with animals, fabulous beasts and biblical scenes. Beneath the eaves run friezes of round arches and narrow bands of masonry, lesenes, and around the apse sometimes a dwarf gallery, a row of small open arches, as in Lund. Inside there were wall paintings in strong colours, not mosaic.

The roof: dome or vault

The Byzantines built in brick with thick joints, a material that gave light vaults and domes that could be built without large centring. The dome on pendentives was their great invention, and later churches raised their domes on drums with windows, so that they became smaller but more numerous.

The Romanesque builders lacked the Romans' concrete and built the walls thick to bear the load. Many churches at first had a flat timber ceiling or an open roof truss. The nave was later covered with barrel vaults or groin vaults: Speyer Cathedral was given vaults over the whole nave around 1100, and Durham Cathedral, begun in 1093, received early rib vaults, one of the steps towards the Gothic. Domes exist in Romanesque architecture, but they are small and sit over the crossing.

Where the styles meet

St Mark's Basilica in Venice, begun in 1063, is the answer to the question of whether a church can be both. The plan is Byzantine, a Greek cross with five domes modelled on the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, and the interior is covered in gold mosaic. But it was built in the West at the same time as the Romanesque cathedrals, and the façade later received Gothic crowning elements. Venice had close ties with Constantinople, and the city's church showed it.

Byzantine features can also appear where one does not expect them. San Vitale was the model for Charlemagne's chapel in Aachen around the year 800. In Lund's Romanesque cathedral the mosaic of Christ in the apse dates from the 1920s, made by Joakim Skovgaard in the Byzantine tradition, and the Golden Hall in Stockholm City Hall is clad in gold mosaic inspired by Ravenna. So do not be fooled by a gold-gleaming interior: look at the plan and the walls.

The styles are presented separately under Byzantine style and Romanesque style, in the guide to Byzantine architecture and in the comparison of Romanesque and Gothic style. The map below shows where the examples are located.

How to tell them apart

Exercise

A medieval church has a long nave, two west towers and sculpted portals. Which style is it probably?