Movement
Byzantine Architecture
Explore in the Atlas →The sacred and imperial building tradition of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, centred on the great domed church. Developing Roman vaulting with the pendentive - the curved triangular device that seats a circular dome over a square plan - it produced luminous interiors clad in marble and gold-ground mosaic, its supreme example being Justinian's Hagia Sophia (537) in Constantinople. Its forms shaped Orthodox church-building and, after 1453, Ottoman mosque design.
Ritual Power Memory
Details
- Origin
- Constantinople, Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire
Classifications
- Holder
- Communal intergenerational
- Source of authority
- Revelation cosmologyAncestry
- Subject
- Human centred
- Cosmological orientation
- Axis mundiCardinal axes
- Political position
- Hegemonic
- Degree of codification
- Pattern based
- Mode of transmission
- Apprenticeship
- Knowledge type
- Relational embodied
- Epistemic cluster
- Western philosophicalCross cultural cosmological
Connections
- influenced Islamic Architecture
Referenced by
- Hagia Sophia exemplifies
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Hagia Sophia. worldhistory.org, 2024.
- Wikipedia. Hagia Sophia. Wikipedia, 2024.
- Rowland J. Mainstone. Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian's Great Church. Thames & Hudson, 1988.
- Robert S. Nelson and Kristen M. Collins (eds.). Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai. J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006.
Cite this entry
First published May 2026Last revised Jul 2026
CLAD. "Byzantine Architecture." Atlas of Architectural Thought. CLAD, 2026. https://www.cl-ad.com.au/research/atlas/movement/byzantine-architecture/. Accessed July 17, 2026.