What are the three major religious buildings of western classicism?

The Roman Empire entered the Christian era in the 4th century. The architecture of this period, like other western cultural phenomena, was in a state of stagnation. Because Christians at that time thought that Christ might come again at any time, and the door of heaven was about to open. So you don't need to care too much about worldly things. However, there is a kind of architecture that appeared at this time, although it first appeared before the Christian era and had no impact. This is basilica.

The picture on the right shows the main hall built by Emperor Trajan in the 2nd century A.D., which is one of the two largest existing halls.

The main hall is a rectangular hall, and the interior is divided into three parts by two rows of columns. The middle part is wide and high, called nave. Wings are narrow and short, called aisles. Therefore, the cross section of the hall is in the shape of a mountain. At both ends or one end of the hall, there is a semicircular niche (back hall). Before the Christian era, the hall was mainly used as a court, a market or a meeting place, and the niche was where judges or conference hosts sat (see the left picture for the plan). Different from Pantheon and Bath, there is no expensive dome or exquisite cross arch in the hall, but a simple beam-column structure-standard Corinthian column and wooden roof. It should be said that the guild hall was not a high-end building at that time.

Perhaps it is because of its commonness that later Christians can get them conveniently, and its spacious interior just meets their needs of gathering people to preach, so the earliest Christian church was directly rebuilt on the basis of the hall. Anyway, when the kingdom of heaven comes, let's make do with it.

So the place where the judge used to sit is now the bishop's seat. Since then, the style of the hall has partially determined the style of all churches in later generations. In the central hall of the back church, there are rows of benches where believers can listen and pray together. There is always a row of columns on both sides to support the whole hall. The columns are narrow and low sidewalks. This layout is obviously influenced by the hall.

Naturally, the early church was rebuilt or imitated by the hall and was called the hall church. As we all know, there is the old St. Peter's Church (see right) built in the 4th century AD, the seat of the Bishop of Rome (this position was later promoted to Pope), and the center of Catholic faith. /kloc-it was demolished after 0/2 century, and now the Vatican St. Peter's Cathedral is built on the original site. Its typical "mountain" cross section is the symbol of church, and it is also an example for many churches in later generations, including the most famous church in China and the Shanghai Sheshan Cathedral, which is known as the "First Church in the Far East".

Among the existing hall churches, the earliest and most famous one should be the Church of the Nativity (built in 330 AD, left) built on the site of the nativity in Palestine by Constantine the Great, the first convert to Christianity. The interior is easily reminiscent of the hall of Trajan. In 200 1 year, due to a hostage-taking incident that shocked the world, this ancient building also experienced a test like a religious war.

In addition to the hall style, there are two types of early churches: central style and cross style.

The layout of centralized church is not a rectangular hall like a hall, but a circular hall. The central part is a big vault with a circle of cloisters around it. The earliest centralized church no longer exists. The most famous living example is in Rome, which was rebuilt on the tomb of Constantine's daughter in the third century (see the right, the dome has been covered by the roof). Because the vault spans only 12 meters, it is supported by 12 pairs of columns, rather than thick walls like the Pantheon. The picture on the left shows the interior of St. constanza's Church. Some early churches were not built to gather people to preach, but to pay tribute to the relics of saints. Most of these churches adopt such a centralized layout.

As the name implies, the layout of the cross is not centered like a circle, but a cross. The reason why this layout is adopted may be related to the Christian worship of the cross. The central hall is still dominated by a dome, but a low "wing" extends around the hall. If it is in the eastern part of the empire, the four-wing corridor is the same size; If it is in the western part of the empire, there is a long wing corridor. Later generations called it "Greek Cross" and "Latin Cross" respectively. The picture on the right shows the earliest existing cruciform church-the tomb of Gala Pra Sidia in Rome (5th century AD). From the outside, it seems to be a square central hall, but inside it is a vault. Please note that the vault here is only 3 meters in diameter, so a headache for later architects has not been exposed.

In the second half of the 5th century, the Visigoths perished the Western Roman Empire. Today, most parts of Europe, especially western Europe, have fallen into the night of civilization. From the architectural point of view, it is obvious that in about three or four centuries, western European architecture has not developed at all, and its main style is still the three churches mentioned above. What's more, Catholicism, which ruled western Europe during this period, emphasized that "ignorance is bliss" and almost completely denied Greek and Roman civilization. The level of academic research has declined and many technologies have been lost. Many buildings in Rome have been abandoned and even become quarries for anyone to use. This is very similar to the fate of Yuanmingyuan after it was burned.

But in the Eastern Roman Empire with Constantinople as its capital, the situation was relatively stable. Because the Orthodox Church (also known as the "Greek Orthodox Church") ruled here and was more tolerant of the traditional Greek and Roman culture, the civilization continued, although the creativity was not as good as before. By the end of the Eastern Roman Empire in the15th century, the architecture here had formed a quite excellent style, which was called Byzantine period in architectural history.

Needless to say, Byzantine architecture is still dominated by churches. On the basis of the above three early church forms, they made unique contributions. They seem to prefer vault. At the top of the central hall of the original Hall Church, they will add a vault. If there is a vault like a cross church in the middle, they will increase the span. But the hidden problem comes out. The middle hall of the hall is square, and the place where it crosses is square, so how to put a circular vault on the square hall?

Their countermeasure is to invent "flat arch" (right, notice how the vault is located on the square wall through it) and "sail arch" (passive, left, four continuous sail arches). Note that they can easily add a dome at the top, while the bottom is already square).

The representative work of Byzantine architecture is the Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey (right). Its original name was Hagia Sophia. It used to be the national church of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was built in the 6th century. You can write a book about its history. First of all, we should know that its original design was to add a dome above the hall church, and the weight of the dome was transferred to four large columns through four sail arches (as shown below). But the pier is separated after all, not the thick wall like the Pantheon. The pier should not be made too thick, otherwise it will affect the space inside the main hall. So how to balance the external thrust exerted by vault is the biggest problem. The designer then added two smaller vaults on both sides of the big vault to share the weight of the big vault and added sail arches and piers to support the small vault. This is not stable enough, and arches are widely used inside and outside the hall to bear the load. The result is such a scene. Architectural technology itself has a sense of art here.

It should be said that such efforts are still effective. The top of the central vault is nearly 55 meters from the ground (a complete indoor space with a height of nearly 18 floors), and the interior space is extremely spacious. It is said that when it was completed, Emperor Justinian proudly challenged the mythical figures in the Bible: King Solomon, I finally defeated you today! But the external thrust of the vault is not completely balanced. Turkey is also an earthquake-prone area, which caused about 20,000 deaths last time (2000). Major earthquakes have damaged Hagia Sophia, and the dome is always knocked down. When repairing, people always think that the downward pressure on the vault is too great, so they increase the camber, which of course does not solve the problem. After 65438+5th century, Islam entered here, and the cathedral was converted into a mosque (the four minarets visible above were added during this period). Islamic architects estimated that the external thrust was too great. In order to be completely stable, four towers with small domes were added around the big vault (two can be seen at the edge of the vault above). /kloc-in the 0/9th century, the vault was destroyed again by the earthquake. It is two Italian architects who came to solve the problem this time. They calculate (thank god, mechanics has finally improved! ), found that the core of the problem is still not completely balanced external thrust. Under the principle of not changing the existing buildings, they used four iron ropes to tie the big vault to the Monkey King's head from the outside like a golden hoop, which gave it extra inward restraint. The problem is finally over here. Although these things have become cultural relics now, they are still classified as things that should not happen in the history of architecture.

Because of the same Orthodox faith, Hagia Sophia has an immeasurable influence on eastern European architecture. This practice of adding a dome to the square hall has been imitated by churches in many places. Fortunately, they are not as ambitious as the emperor, so the loss is small. In western Europe, there are imitations. For example, Saint Kyle's Church in Venice (built in 1 1 century, as shown on the right, and later decorated with many decorations).

The characteristic of Byzantine architecture, besides favoring the dome, is the widespread use of mosaic technology. This method of assembling patterns with small colored ceramic pieces was very popular in the early Roman Empire. The famous ancient city of Pompeii has been excavated a lot. However, mosaic was widely used for church decoration, which was a feature of Byzantine period. The image of Jesus, angels, saints, etc. As shown on the left (the left is the portrait of Emperor Justinian who built Hagia Sophia). Although later churches did not have this habit, many churches are still spelling out some patterns or portraits with different colors of glass, which is the legacy of mosaic technology.

The Byzantine Empire gradually declined in the later period. At this time, western Europe is coming out of the dark night of civilization, and it is a vibrant scene.