A Viking ship like the ones that sailed on the First Crusade Before the First Crusade Throughout the 1000s AD, Viking mercenary soldiers, some coming down the Volga river through Russia, and others sailing around [...]
Cathedral of Pisa (the Duomo) This is the cathedral of medieval Pisa, in Italy. The architects built the cathedral in the Romanesque style around 1064 AD. The rounded arches are typical of the Romanesque style. So is the [...]
Florence baptistery: the Romanesque baptistery in Florence, Italy Earlier Florence baptistery (700 AD) Probably people had built an earlier, smaller octagonal baptistery here around 700 AD. This is where Catholic priests baptized Christian [...]
Early Gothic architecture: Notre Dame of Paris (1160s AD) What came after Romanesque? After the Romanesque period in architecture, around 1100 AD, architects in western Europe gradually started to build Christian churches and palaces in [...]
Aachen cathedral (begun 792 AD) One of the first ambitious buildings in Western Europe after the fall of Rome was Charlemagne's chapel at his capital of Aachen (now in northern Germany) about 792 [...]
Tomb of Ali, the first Imam and the fourth caliph, in Iraq (it was rebuilt about 1500 AD by the Safavids) Mohammed died in 632 AD. His second wife's father, a rich [...]
Dome of the Rock mosque, Jerusalem People didn't build a lot of new buildings during the Umayyad period. They were busy getting organized after the Islamic conquests, and the Umayyad dynasty didn't [...]
Kairouan (about 800 AD) The first Islamic buildings Greek architects designed the first buildings in the new Islamic Empire. They had already been living in the area when the Arabs conquered it. Because [...]
Dome history: the Pantheon (Rome, ca. 120 AD) Okay, you've learned how to build an arch. Now suppose you want to make a dome. How would you do that using [...]
