Romanesque architecture is the pre-gothic style of european church architecture (c. 1000–1200) marked by round arches, thick walls, and small windows.
Romanesque architecture flourished across Europe from roughly 1000 to 1200, succeeding Carolingian and Ottonian styles and preceding Gothic. The name, coined by 19th-century scholars, reflects the style's debt to Roman building practices: the rounded arch, the barrel vault, the groin vault, and the basilica plan. Romanesque churches are typically massive in feel — thick walls, small deep-set windows, sturdy piers, and powerful round towers — designed both to support heavy stone vaulting and to project the security of the Church in an unstable era. The pilgrimage churches along the Camino de Santiago — Sainte-Foy at Conques, Saint-Sernin at Toulouse, the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela — are among its supreme achievements. The cathedrals of Pisa (begun 1063), Speyer (rebuilt 1080–1106), and Durham (begun 1093) extended the style across Italy, Germany, and Norman England. Sculptural programmes on tympana and capitals — at Vézelay, Autun, Moissac — are inseparable from the architecture. Around 1140 the Romanesque was overtaken by the Gothic, but its monumental gravity has never been forgotten.