Academic literature on the topic 'Visigothic Architecture'

The use of Roman and Late-antique spolia in the erection of Umayyad infrastructures is extensively documented, from Bilad al-Sham to al-Andalus. Particularly in the latter, spolia were key in the construction of mosques, of which the Friday Mosque of Córdoba is the most paradigmatic example. The reuse of decorative and architectural materials in these religious spaces has been broadly discussed, and it has been often concluded that there were aesthetic, religious and ideological reasons, as well as strong political needs of legitimation and representation of the Umayyad dynasty. In this context, the case of the mosque of Madinat al-Zahra' is quite striking. Here, while spolia seem to have been absent, the capitals designed for its prayer room stand out for their particular characteristics, often described as resembling Visigothic models and as a product of rush. This paper aims to bring together the information available about the use of spolia in Umayyad mosques and its possible explanations, as well as to bring forward the particularities of the series of capitals designed for the mosque of Madinat al-Zahra', suggesting new ideas for their interpretation.

Technological advancements have a great impact on the dissemination and understanding of the cultural heritage reality due to innovative techniques. These innovations are based on high-precision and high-resolution technologies that allow for the geometric documentation of any object within the fields of history and the arts. Through these techniques, new proposals may be studied and objects can be placed in any historical context. Three-dimensional (3D) digitization allows one to obtain a digital 3D model, which can be handled virtually and recreated at any historical period, enabling the conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage. Society currently demands new visualization techniques that allow interacting with architectural and artistic heritage, which have been applied in numerous virtual reconstructions of historical sites or singular archaeological pieces. This project allowed us to geometrically document a reused piece with two surfaces (shield and columns) and a plaque of the city of Merida using a structured light scanner from a theoretical-practical perspective. The 3D virtual reconstruction of the pieces was accomplished within this study. The generation of QR codes enabled the interactive display of the heritage pieces. Likewise, a proposal was made to reuse the aforementioned pieces through virtual archaeology. The initial hypothesis is based on the possible existence of a Visigothic niche as an original form. This research reports significant advances in the conservation and exploitation of cultural heritage.

The article analyzes the image of the Roman past of Hispanic cities, as reflected in works created after the Moslem conquest of the 8th century. Writers who wrote in Arabic had no reliable information about Roman architectural inheritance and tried to compensate for this fact by using other sources, such as prejudices, myths, legends and fantasies. Works of the descriptive genre (al-masãlik wa-l-mamãlik) demonstrate this tendency most clearly. The books written by the Arab Hispanic author al-Idrīsī (12th century) and the Persian writer al-Ḥimyarī (15th century) belong to this genre. Al-Ḥimyarī had never been to Spain (al-Andalus) but was very interested in this country and left a very detailed description of it. Both writers reflected the image of Merida in their works. This city had great importance in Roman and Visigothic times. Strange interpretations of the functions of some Roman buildings in Merida (theater, amphitheater, aqueduct, forum, triumphal arches and others) found in the work of al-Ḥimyarī were frequently taken from al-Idrīsī. The fantastic interpretation of the origin of the name of Merida (“residence of an honorable or noble man”: mashkīn ashsharīf) suggested by al-Ḥimyarī had the same source. At the same time, much better grounded information included in the work of alRāzī (written in the 10th century) was disregarded. The main cause of these incorrect interpretations was a lack of knowledge of Roman municipal life in the case of Arabic writers.

L’étude présentée ici a pour but d’analyser la manière d’utiliser l’arc outrepassé, en plan et en élévation, et l’arc en retrait sur ses piliers, dans une région et dans un temps pragmatiquement défini du monde méditerranéen particulièrement riche en éléments architecturaux de ce type. L’arc en retrait n’est pas inconnu dans la recherche mais, faute d’identification précise et donc de terminologie adaptée, il a été confondu avec l’arc outrepassé sous des dénominations différentes. Faisant l’objet de diverses théories dans l’historiographie, ces deux types d’arcs ont été utilisés comme arguments majeurs dans la datation et dans la filiation stylistique des édifices dans lesquels ils se trouvent. L’objectif de cette approche consiste à confronter ces courants historiographiques, inscrivant un monument donné comme relevant du monde wisigothique, mozarabe ou carolingienne, à l’analyse des monuments in situ dans les régions catalano-roussillonnaises et languedociennes où ces formes présentent une concentration considérable. Dans ces théories tenaces, souvent assimilables à des idées reçues sans discernement, l’abbaye de Saint-Michel de Cuxa a occupé une place particulière de sorte que son attribution s’est répercutée sur de nombreux édifices, surtout des chapelles rurales, gravitant dans son orbite. Les monuments situés sur les deux versants des Pyrénées possédant ces formes en élévation ou dans la planimétrie constituent un corpus de 98 édifices. Ils ne révèlent pas seulement une certaine uniformité pour l’ensemble du territoire mais, au-delà, permettent également de définir des microrégions homogènes. L’étude de ce territoire est intégrée dans une analyse historiographique plus vaste de ces deux types d’arcs qui cherche la réponse à leur origine, à leur propagation géographique au fil de temps et présente les différentes réflexions sur la raison d’être de leur emploi. A côté des théories pragmatiques qui considèrent ces formes comme des procédés techniques offrant des avantages constructifs et des mesures techniques qui cherchent à établir une typologie séparant les arcs de différentes époques et de différentes aires géographiques, une attention particulière est apportée aux dimensions idéologiques, liturgiques et symboliques liées à ces tracés
This study focusses, in façade and in plan, on the horseshoe arch, the hallmark of architecture in the first flowering of the Middle Ages, and on the recessed arch on piers, its more or less unrecognised contemporary. The geographical extent of the occurrence of these two types of arch has been defined by the periodic enlargement of the area where they are really concentrated: Spanish Catalonia and French Languedoc-Roussillon. Applied often to dating a building, and becoming involved as a result in a stylistic epistemology, as well as being the targets of the entrenched dogmas of a vast historiography, these pieces of evidence are here studied on the ground in their architectural context so as to juxtapose fieldwork with the theories on their deployment developed a century ago. Given the spread of developed mediaeval arches, this work endeavours to place their corpus in a wider general study which clearly cannot depend on an exhaustive survey, but which is able to suggest, nevertheless, that the realm of the Moorish arch transcends the territorial and chronological limits of Visigothic, Mozarabic, Carolingian or Islamic culture. The origin of the recessed arch on its piers, for which we propose the term «mushroom shape» displays an undeniable origin in antiquity. Its diffusion in time and space coincides with the horse-shoe throughout the vast Mediterranean ambit. The corpus of the area studied brings together 98 buildings which preserve in their structure the Moorish arch and/or the recessed arch on piers. An analysis of arch assembly, incorporated in the overall study of a building’s construction, confirms that the Moorish design or that of the recessed arch on piers concerned not only arches but was inherent in a general building process observable in the raising of the vault, or of any transverse arches or in openings, doorways or windows. The endurance of these same building procedures for centuries, for minor works such as small country chapels, as for the great abbey church of Saint- Michel de Cuxa, testifies to a conservative art associated with basic techniques

With its strategic geographic location near the major Roman roads in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, Toledo was the Visigoth capital under Theudis in the year ad 546 until the collapse of the kingdom in the early eighth century. Most of the evidence of its architectural power linked to new local elites is located in the countryside rather than in the city of Toledo. Archaeology has attested the collapse of the Roman territorial model and its substitution by a medieval one. This model is characterized by the appearance of monumental complexes, in which monastic and sacred complexes linked to the aristocracies of Toledo acquired preference, key for understanding the social, cultural, and economic dynamics of the fifth and the eighth centuries.