| Romans Technology of Building |
During the 2d century BC the Romans, in conquering North Africa, Greece, Anatolia, and Spain, absorbed the architectural traditions of those areas (most significantly that of Greece), to which they added the constructional skills of the Etruscans, their immediate neighbors in central Italy. The most significant achievements of the Romans were in their technology of building, their use of a much wider range of materials (including concrete, terra-cotta, and fired bricks), and their refinements of the arch and vault and the dome--all of which had been pioneered by the Etruscans. Roman temples generally remained modeled on those of Greece, with the common addition of a high plinth (base or platform) and the frequent omission of the side and rear columns, typified by the Maison Carre at Nimes, France. Roman civic monuments included a number of building types of unprecedented size and complexity, which could not have been built using the Greek beam-and-column construction system. The Aqueduct, thermae (such as the Baths of Caracalla), Basilica (law court), theater, Triumphal Arch, amphitheater (such as the Colosseum), circuses, and palaces involved enclosing much larger spaces or bridging much greater distances than could be achieved by the use of timber or stone beams. The Roman use of domed construction in mass concrete is best represented by the well-preserved Pantheon in Rome (constructed AD 120-24), which subsequently became a Christian church. Later Roman or Early Christian churches, however, generally took their form from the basilica, whose central nave, side aisles, triforium, and apse became characteristic features of the Romanesque and Gothic church. Emperor Constantine I built huge basilican churches at all the major Christian sites in the Roman Empire in the 4th century, thus firmly establishing the basilica as the predominant form of Christian church architecture. |
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