The vaulting of the nave itself was developed in another series of edifices of imposing size, the cathedrals of Mayence (1036), Spires (Speyer), and Worms, and the Abbey of Laach, all built in the 11th century and vaulted early in the 12th. In the first three the main vaulting is in square bays, each covering two bays of the nave, the piers of which are alternately lighter and heavier (Figs. 99, 100). At Laach the vaulting-bays are oblong, both in nave and aisles. There was no triforium gallery, and stability was secured only by excessive thickness in the piers and clearstory walls, and by bringing down the main vault as near to the side-aisle roofs as possible.
RHENISH EXTERIORS. These great churches, together with those of Bonn and Limburg-on-the-Lahn and the cathedral of Treves (Trier, 1047), are interesting, not only by their size and dignity of plan and the somewhat rude massiveness of their construction, but even more so by the picturesqueness of their external design (Fig. 101). Especially successful is the massing of the large and small turrets with the lofty nave-roof and with the apses at one or both ends. The systematic use of arcading to decorate the exterior walls, and the introduction of open arcaded dwarf galleries under the cornices of the apses, gables, and dome-turrets, gave to these Rhenish churches an external beauty hardly equalled in other contemporary edifices. This method of exterior design, and the system of vaulting in square bays over double bays of the nave, were probably derived from the Lombard churches of Northern Italy, with which the Hohenstauffen emperors had many political relations.
FIG. 101.—EAST END OF CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES, COLOGNE.
The Italian influence is also encountered in a number of circular churches of early date, as at Fulda (9th-11th century), Drügelte, Bonn (baptistery, demolished), and in façades like that at Rosheim, which is a copy in little of San Zeno at Verona.
Elsewhere in Germany architecture was in a backward state, especially in the southern provinces. Outside of Saxony, Franconia, and the Rhine provinces, very few works of importance were erected until the thirteenth century.
SECULAR ARCHITECTURE. Little remains to us of the secular architecture of this period in Germany, if we except the great feudal castles, especially those of the Rhine, which were, after all, rather works of military engineering than of architectural art. The palace of Charlemagne at Aix (the chapel of which was mentioned on [p. 172]) is known to have been a vast and splendid group of buildings, partly, at least of marble; but hardly a vestige of it remains. Of the extensive Palace of Henry III. at Goslar there remain well-defined ruins of an imposing hall of assembly in two aisles with triple-arched windows. At Brunswick the east wing of the Burg Dankwargerode displays, in spite of modern alterations, the arrangement of the chapel, great hall, two fortified towers, and part of the residence of Henry the Lion. The Wartburg palace (Ludwig III., cir. 1150) is more generally known—a rectangular hall in three stories, with windows effectively grouped to form arcades; while at Gelnhausen and Münzenberg are ruins of somewhat similar buildings. A few of the Romanesque monasteries of Germany have left partial remains, as at Maulbronn, which was almost entirely rebuilt in the Gothic period, and isolated buildings in Cologne and elsewhere. There remain also in Cologne a number of Romanesque private houses with coupled windows and stepped gables.
