Romanesque architecture

The name Romanesque, like many other stylistic designations, was not a term contemporary with the art it describes but an invention of modern scholarship to categorize a period. The term "Romanesque" attempts to link the architecture, especially, of the 11th and 12th centuries in medieval Europe to Roman Architecture based on similarities of forms and materials.

The great carved portals of 12th century church facades parallel the architectural novelty of the period - monumental stone sculpture seems reborn in the Romanesque.

Romanesque seems to be the first pan-European style since Roman Imperial Architecture and examples are found in every part of the continent. One important fact pointed out by the stylistic similarity of buildings across Euorpe is the relative mobility of medieval people. Contrary to many modern ideas of life before the Industrial Revolution, merchants, nobles, knights, artisans, and peasants crossed Europe and the Mediterranean world for business, war, and religious pilgrimages, carrying their knowledge of what buildings in different places looked like. The important pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, modern north east Spain, may have generated as well as spread some aspects of the Romanesque style.

• inside modern France

St. Sernin, Toulouse

St. Benigne, Dijon

• inside modern Germany

Speyer Cathedral, Speyer

• inside modern Spain

San Miguel de Cuxa

Santiago de Compostela

• inside modern Italy

San Ambrogio, Milan

San Zeno, Verona