Romanesque architecture explained

We're sitting in Durham Cathedral in Northern England, and we wanted to talk about how you recognize a Romanesque church. And Durham is a great place for us to have this conversation. It's one of the oldest Romanesque churches in England, and it's enormous. Romanesque is a word that often is applied to the style of architecture on the continent. Here in England, we often refer to this style as Anglo-Norman, referring to the Normans who had invaded in 1066 and brought this style of architecture with them from France. And it's often put forward that Romanesque architecture was the first large-scale architecture since the Roman Empire in Western Europe. But there was, in fact, large-scale building before the Romanesque. One only needs to look at, for example, the Palatine Chapel in Aachen or St. Ambrosio in Milan. And art historians are also aware that traditions from the Middle East and from Spain, which was at this time not under the control of Christians but was under the control of Islam, might also play a role here. But what makes the architecture of this period unique is that it addressed the needs of people who were now on the move. And they were on the move because they were going in large numbers on pilgrimages to visit important religious sites, to visit relics in the hope, often, of a miracle that could be performed, a healing or even acquiring merit that could ultimately lead to less time in purgatory and an arrival sooner in heaven. And the church that we're in was an important pilgrimage destination because it housed and still houses the relics of St. Cuthbert. Churches had to be built to accommodate large numbers of pilgrims. And those pilgrims brought wealth to the towns that held these relics. And the wealth that pilgrims brought with them, which was spent at local inns or to purchase souvenirs or direct donations to the church, meant that there was money to build these large-scale structures. It also meant that the design of the building needed to be able to allow for large numbers of people to move through without interrupting, for instance, a mass that might be taking place at the high altar. And there had to be chapels that contained the relics that the pilgrims could visit. Let's begin with the basic plan. This church uses the plan of a basilica, which is actually an ancient Roman type of building that was adapted by early Christians. Basilicas in the Romanesque era often also included a transept, that is, a second hall perpendicular with the main hall, which we call the nave, and therefore gives the entire building the outline of a cross. They also often included an aisle on either side of that main hallway of the nave, sometimes even two aisles, so that you could hold larger numbers of people who needed to circulate through the church. The single most characteristic aspect of Romanesque architecture is its use of the ancient Roman arch, that is, the round arch. When we look, for example, across the nave, we notice, at the very lowest level, a row of round arches, in fact, very deep round arches with rolled molding. Above that, at the gallery level, we see another round arch, this one subdivided into two smaller round arches. And at Durham, it's a very deep gallery with a walkway that would have been used for members of the church. And above that is a more narrow passage and windows that bring in daylight. But as is typical of Romanesque churches, these are quite small, and so these are relatively dark spaces. We see yet another round arch this time, subdivided into three smaller round arches, where the central arch is larger than the ones on either side. So the architects of the Romanesque period had to span the nave, and to do that, most Romanesque churches used a barrel vault.