ARCH 48403-001: Medieval Architecture Monuments

Arch of Constantine

Location Rome Italy (ca. 315 CE). Displays classical roundels from 100–133 CE reassembled alongside Late Antique friezes from ca. 315 CE. Exemplifies Jas Elsner’s theory of spolia where meaning is produced through literal and conceptual fragmentation and reassemblage

Old St. Peter’s Basilica

Location Vatican Rome Italy (319–333 CE). Constantinian church built over Peter's 2nd-century memorial. Integrates a continuous transept and programmatic spolia including 22 mismatched columns in four rows carrying a high entablature. Features twisted Solomonic columns framing the central Petrine shrine

St. John Lateran

Location Rome Italy (313–320 CE). Constantinian bishop's cathedral built for the Christian Pontifex Maximus. Features a hierarchical layout contrasting a straight trabeated colonnade in the nave with arches in the side aisles. Includes a ceremonial fastigium

San Lorenzo

Location Milan Italy (ca. 352–375 CE). Double-shell quatrefoil imperial church with an atrium constructed from 2nd-century spolia columns. Attached to the octagonal Imperial Mausoleum of San Aquilino built with stone spolia from a nearby amphitheater

San Sebastiano

Location Rome Italy (312/313–337 CE). U-shaped circus basilica built over catacombs serving as a covered cemetery and performing space. Utilitarian yet symbolic arena where the faithful held pagan-influenced Christian funerary banquets (stibadia) over martyrs' graves

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Location Jerusalem (begun 325 CE). Multi-building sacred arena combining an aisled galleried basilica (the martyrion) and an open courtyard with the rock of Golgotha and the Anastasis Rotunda surrounds Christ's tomb. Theatrical performing space for early pilgrims

Church of the Holy Apostles

Location Milan Italy (382–386 CE). Built by Bishop Ambrose in a Greek-cross plan to physically express the triumph of Christ. Utilizing a disorderly masonry blend of riverbed rocks and broken tiles with reused Roman bricks as a literal manifestation of fragmentation. Includes actual saints' bones as holy spolia

Monastery of St. Bishoy

Location Wadi al-Natrun Egypt (4th century CE). Early coenobitic monastery designed defensively to resemble a Roman castrum military camp. Features the three vital components of Eastern communal monasticism: a main church plus an enclosure wall and a refectory

Mausoleum of Santa Costanza

Location Rome Italy (ca. 350 CE). Double-shell central-plan imperial tomb built for Constantine's daughter and attached to the S. Agnese circus basilica. Features a vaulted ambulatory serving as a Christian spatial invention to screen and subdivide sacred space

Mausoleum of St. Helena

Location Rome Italy (completed 326 CE). Single-shell central-plan imperial mausoleum attached to the SS. Marcellinus and Peter circus basilica. Represents an imperial monument that loses face to favor Christian holy sites by being directly appended to a crowded cemeterial basilica

Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

Location Ravenna Italy (ca. 425–450 CE). Brick cruciform oratory and tomb attached to the Church of Santa Croce. Dissolves architecture in color by contrasting an austere exterior with a rich interior lined with blue-and-gold mosaics of paradise

Orthodox Baptistery

Location Ravenna Italy (ca. 458 CE). Octagonal central-plan baptistery with a highly organized dome mosaic. The mosaic acts as a celestial ordering device depicting a converging procession of the Twelve Apostles surrounding the central scene of the Baptism of Christ

Santa Maria Maggiore

Location Rome Italy (422–430 CE). Devotional basilica representing the peak of the classical style revival. Rejects the standard arcade and instead features a nave where elegant columns carry straight classical architraves and entablatures adorned with historical narrative mosaics

Santa Sabina

Location Rome Italy (422–432 CE). Highly unified classical-style basilica converted from an earlier house church. Renowned for its elegant spatial design where marble inlays fill the spandrels between the arches

Aula Nova

Location Trier Germany (305–312 CE). Single-nave solid brick civil audience hall built for Constantine's imperial palace complex. Relies on a non-columnar aesthetic focusing attention on the imperial apse with banked round-headed windows in cadenced progression. Highly influential on Early Christian church design