this video is going to introduce the romanesque period so romanesque is a period of european art and architecture that lasts roughly from the year um 1050 to 1300 and it's the last period that we're going to discuss for western architecture now romanesque as a term it means roman like and so romanesque is a word that's developed by scholars looking back on this period now the the romanesque period is called romanesque because the architecture looks roughly roman and the reason it looks roman is because they use the same arches the romans so our classic semicircular arch that the romans used over and over again the romans exploited for their architecture that's what we see in the rome nest period so that's one very clear similarity the other similarity is the large-scale architecture and then the use of stone construction so when scholars were looking back on this period and this is 19th century scholars looking at the romanesque period they saw the use of arches they saw the large-scale architecture and they saw the use of stone and they thought it looks like what the romans did so we got romanesque very sort of simple explanation of this style but those characteristics the arch the scale the materials those are really our period style characteristics that's the uh characteristics that we're going to look at that unify this period now one thing that is important about romanesque is if we go to our map for a second looking at the map we see holy roman empire in purple we see france in pink we see the norman kingdom in green um we do not see the romanesque kingdom we are finally looking at a period style that um is not a style that's attached to a governed government or territory uh romanesque is a style that's found across um western europe it's a style that's really unified by religion uh churches cathedrals they are being built in the romanesque style so we see this period style this type of architecture being built in the holy roman empire being built in france being built in the norman kingdom because we're talking about christian territories and we're also talking about the rising power of the roman catholic church as being a unifying force in western europe and really being a force that also ties into governments many rulers in western europe like charlemagne will support the church with money they will give land for um church structures to be built right it's a bit of a symbiotic relationship we did talk about that with charlemagne with him being crowned holy roman emperor all right um a couple other notes that we need to uh know with the romanesque period uh if we look to the um bottom of the map the territory i haven't quite pointed out yet um where we have islamic territories in orange in the south of spain and in north africa we're going to talk about that architecture as our our last period style for the um semester but uh this is also the period again of the crusades and so we have uh islamic rulers gaining more territory during this period in north africa in the eastern mediterranean we have a culture clash going on i did talk about this more in depth during the byzantine period but we're in the contemporary period so we followed a byzantine empire until it's fall in 1453 now we're going back in time you know to the um uh romnest period and then we're going to follow that period forward what's also going on during this is just there's a lot of trade and so this is kind of a low quality not the best map um but just what i wanted to point out is the trade routes the red those are trade routes uh green are trade routes so it's trade reps on land and trade routes by sea and then the black is the right of marco polo um just to say that there's a lot of exchange between east and west going on during this period there's a lot of uh trade during this period and there's actually like international trade fairs and going on during this period what happens is that the romanesque there is relative peace during this period um there's you know crops do relatively well you know merchants do illustrators in general it's a peaceful period that allows for this exchange to um build up okay so that is our introduction to romanesque why it's romanesque what's going on during this period culturally