Semi-circular arches are a defining feature of the architectural style known as Romanesque in medieval Europe.
There is disagreement over when the Romanesque style first emerged; dates ranging from the sixth to the eleventh centuries have been put up, with the eleventh century being the most often accepted. The Gothic style, which is characterized by pointed arches, emerged in the 12th century. Romanesque architecture is the first pan-European architectural style since Imperial Roman architecture, and there are examples of it all over the continent. In England, the Romanesque architectural style is sometimes referred to as Norman architecture.
Romanesque architecture is characterized by its enormous quality, thick walls, round arches, powerful pillars, barrel vaults, towering towers, and ornamental arcading. It combines elements of old Roman and Byzantine structures with other regional traditions. When compared to the Gothic structures that would follow, each building has distinct shapes that are typically of a very regular, symmetrical pattern, and their overall appearance is one of simplicity. Despite regional differences and various materials, the style may be recognized all around Europe.
Although many castles were constructed during this time, churches outweigh castles by a wide margin. The largest, most complete, and often used are the major abbey churches, several of which are still standing today. The massive number of churches constructed during the Romanesque era were followed by the even busier Gothic era, which partially or completely restored most Romanesque structures in rich nations like England and Portugal. The largest populations of Romanesque survivors can be found in portions of southern France, rural Spain, and rural Italy, which were less prosperous in later eras.
The domestic quarters of monasteries and undefended Romanesque mansions and palaces are much less common to see now, although both of these structures utilized and modified features found in church structures on a smaller scale.
The term “Romanesque,” which means “descended from Roman,” was originally used in English to refer to what are now known as Romance languages, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (first cited 1715). Archaeologist Charles de Gerville first used the word “romane” in the context of architecture in a letter to Auguste Le Prévost dated December 18, 1818, to characterize what Gerville considered to be a debased Roman architecture. In his Essai sur l’architecture religieuse du moyen-âge, particulièrement en Normandie, Gerville’s friend Arcisse de Caumont coined the term “roman” to describe the “degraded” European architecture from the 5th to the 13th centuries in 1824, at a time when the precise dates of many of the buildings so described had not yet been established.
An Inquiry into the Origin and Influence of Gothic Architecture by William Gunn contains the first instance in a published text (London 1819). Gunn coined the term to characterize a distinctively Medieval architectural style that anticipated Gothic while retaining the rounded Roman arch and thus appearing to be a continuation of the Roman architectural history.
The phrase is now only used to refer to the latter 10th to later 12th centuries. In Germany, buildings from the Carolingian and Ottonian periods as well as those built in the Iberian Peninsula during the Visigoth, Mozarab, and Asturian periods between the eighth and tenth centuries are sometimes referred to as “Pre-romanesque,” while “First Romanesque” refers to structures in northern Italy, Spain, and some regions of France that have Romanesque features but were built before the Abbey of Cluny.
