Renaissance Architecture
After all of the architects of the Gothic era had come to a point where there just wasn’t anything else that they could change, they started doing different things and dropping almost all Gothic ideas.
In the early 1400’s, architects reverted back to the older styles of Romanesque and Greek. The architects of the Renaissance period refined Greek architecture and used new materials not usually associated with Greek, like brick. Red also started to become the common color.
The artists and architects got together more and you started seeing more artwork and sculpture in the cathedrals, temples and other buildings. Something else that appeared more was domes. Suddenly all of the cathedrals had to have domes. Some famous Renaissance buildings of the time were marveled because of their great domes. Two examples of such buildings are the Duomo of Florence and the Pazzi Chapel, also in Florence.
The Renaissance actually started in Italy. If you wish to be more exact, Florence. At the time, it was the largest, richest, and most prosperous of all Italian cities. After the wave hit Florence, it spread from around that general area, encompassing Rome and Milan. Then, slowly but surely, it filtered over the Alps to France. This "migration" of styles took almost 125 years.
When the style started appearing in French buildings, to me, it looked as if it had acquired a look of a decorative castle. There were outer walls, and towers, much like Medieval Castles. As I said about domes, these French Renaissance structures had domes, but they were usually in the ceiling of the rooms. Soon after, the Renaissance era moved to the surrounding countries, but it looked more like French Renaissance than Italian.
