The Gothic and Romanesque styles are two separate architectural styles but they have some similarities and differences. Some of the differences are that the Romanesque architectural style was commonly applicable during the 9th and 12th century, with much influence from the Byzantine and Roman styles.
On the contrary, the origin of the Gothic architectural style was during the mid-12th century with the main aim of decorating churches so that they can resemble the heaven because the decorations made the churches to be brighter, elevated and lively. Additionally, the Romanesque architectures used dissimilar characteristics in making style, which included making them large, using barrel vaults, their walls were thick, had internal space and their doors and windows had rounded arches.
On the contrary, the Gothic styles used differing features in their styles, which included vertical lines, highness and flying buttresses among others. Therefore, the use of buttresses was the major differences between the two styles because it was only applicable in Gothic works (Ross, 68).
Furthermore, there were some differences in the buildings made using Gothic style and those with Romanesque style. This is because the Romanesque buildings were more solid and they had heavy as well as thick walls while the Gothic building had thick walls thus making it hard to put numerous windows on a building. Moreover, the Romanesque buildings were less lit with light because they has small windows, but their structures had heavy frames whereas the structures in Gothic style had small skeleton even though they had bigger windows with glasses allowing more light inside compared to Romanesque.
Notably, the structures made with the Gothic architectural style were tall thus pointing to the sky while those from Romanesque style had blunt tower. The differences occurred between the two architectural styles because they went through varying phases in dissimilar parts of Europe during the medieval period thus bring about distinctions in general themes (Ross, 68).
Work Cited
Ross, Leslie. Artists of the Middle Ages. Westport (Conn.: Greenwood press, 2003. Print.
