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A first century temple to Mars, or possibly Janus, near Autun (ancient Augustodunum) in Burgundy may have inspired the large churches of this region in the 11th and 12th centuries. Only a fraction of this building remains today.  Here, a family from the Netherlands had a picnic while climbing the ruin. A movement  to dot the landscape of Europe with large churches in the 11th and 12th centuries was fueled by deep Christian faith, but, initially, the important building technologies had inspiration from the remains of ancient, pagan buildings. The population surged at this time and the last invaders, the Vikings and Magyars, had settled down. A transept of St. Lazare, Autun, built around 1120 has tall arches and a blind arcade like many late Roman buildings. The rib vaults vault are an innovation of Romanesque Romanesque is the name given today to that style of art, reflecting its common traits with Roman architecture: arches, barrel vaults and groin vaults.  Altho...

The Erechtheion is an Ionic building, with its porches going in different directions. It commemorates the founding of Athens, with the contest between Athena and Poseidon Glistening white marbles which is seem to grow out of the hill form the picture on my mind of the Athens' Acropolis, from what I've seen in textbooks.  The city's highest hill has been a wonder to the world for 2500 years, and a symbol of Greek civilization since ancient times. One climbs the hill to get to the Propylaia, monumental gateway to the Acropolis.  A wide opening in the center allowed horse-drawn chariots to enter.  This view is from inside the hill. Although the Parthenon is Doric, this column on the ground was Ionic Yet, at any given time, so much on the Acropolis is in the process of restoration, covered up by scaffolds.  I was there on the first day of June, which, unusually, was not a sunny day. A view of the Acropolis ruins leads to another hill, capped Athens Tower I was surprised ...

This summer I finally had the opportunity to go to Greece and see the sprawling Palace at Knossos.  Actually, it's not certain if this site was a palace, administrative center, giant apartment building, religious/ceremonial building, or all of the above.  Yet it is so huge that, when discovered in 1900, archeologist Arthur Evans certainly thought he had found a true labyrinth where the legendary King Minos lived and kept his minotaur.  The name Minoan for the Bronze Age people who lived in Crete from about 2000-1300 BC has stuck. Covering 6 acres, the palace of Knossos and the surrounding city may have had a population of 100,000 in the Bronze Age According to legend, the king of Athens paid tribute to King Minos by sending him 7 young men and young women who were in turn fed and sacrificed to the half-man, half-bull minotaur. Eventually, with the aid of Minos' daughter and the inventor Daedalus, Theseus carried a ball of thread to find his way out and to slay the beast. ...

In the huge Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily, a girl is can be seen through the corridor....................not one, but the room has 10 of these bikini girls engaged in some athletic activities. They are made of pieces of finely cut stone, set into mortar for a smooth finish on the floor. Mark Schara took these photos of the largest series of floor mosaics in the Roman Empire. Their games include the discus throw, weight lifting and ball tossing. One with a palm and crown may be a winner. From the mosaics in ancient Sicily we can trace the art of stone floor mosaics, backwards. Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Amerina, covered by a landslide in the 13th century but now uncovered, has the largest group of extant mosaics from the Roman world. The cut marble stones decorated floors, not walls, of the palace. It is not known who built or owned the huge villa in the early 4th century, but it may be connected to the emperors, or gladiators in the late Roman Empire. ...

In Selinunte, Sicily, the remains of several Greek temples from the 6th- 5th century BC can reveal much about temple construction, although they fell to Carthaginian invasions and earthquakes not long after their building.                     Architect Mark Schara, with his good eye for detail, took almost all of these photos.  Temple E has most of its outer colonnade, the peristyle , restored . Classical harmony is apparent in the rhythm of fluted columns, continuing up into the triglyphs raised to the sky. . But many of the capitals have fallen. On the ground level, we can appreciate their large scale. Temple F was badly damaged . Much of the white stucco facing for the fluted limestone column on right is still visible. Tem ple G, below, was the largest of the 7 temples of Selinunte, the ancient city of Silenus. This temple had columns about 54 feet tall. Here, we see the c...

(Thanks to Mark Schara for the use of his photographs) The North Baths of Morgantina, in east central Sicily, date to the 3rd century BCE and may in fact represent the earliest dome that has been excavated in the ancient Mediterranean world. Like everything in the buried settlement of Morgantina, it was built before the Roman conquest in 211 BCE. This new evidence suggests that Hellenistic Greeks, not Romans, invented the first dome. However, unlike the concrete used by Romans to make domes, the construction material would have been terra cotta tubes found on the site; the sizes and formation of these tubes suggest they were used to make a domed space. Public baths were a staple of the ancient towns and cities. Morgantina was a small settlement and the dimension of its baths are modest. Yet the roofing of the North Baths structure appears very significant. Two oblong rooms and one circular room were found to have curved ceilings made of these interlocking tube...