Domes in Medieval Architecture:
Construction and Design between East and West

Speyer, 11–13 February 2027

Funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation

Between the Pantheon and Brunelleschi lies a largely overlooked chapter in the history of architecture: the medieval dome. Neither merely a continuation of antiquity nor simply a prelude to the Renaissance, the domes of the medieval world constituted a radical field of experimentation in geometry, construction, material intelligence, and spatial imagination. Built simultaneously across East and West — in churches, mosques, imperial monuments, and sacred complexes — these structures transformed inherited traditions into new architectural languages whose technical and intellectual complexity has only begun to be fully understood.

Organized by the Chair of Construction History at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus–Senftenberg in collaboration with the Dombauamt Speyer and the Dombauverein Speyer, this international conference proposes a new reading of medieval dome architecture: not through isolated stylistic categories, but through the shared problems and ambitions of builders confronting geometry, material, and potential knowledge transfer.

The conference brings into dialogue architectural traditions that are too often studied separately — Romanesque, Byzantine, Persian, Anatolian, Syrian, and Mamluk — asking how medieval builders across vastly different cultural spheres addressed analogous constructive and spatial challenges. Rather than tracing simplistic narratives of influence, the event seeks to uncover a broader medieval culture of architectural knowledge: a world of master builders, geometric practice, stereotomy, experimentation, and technical invention circulating across political and religious boundaries.

Methodologically, the conference foregrounds architecture as material evidence. Contributions are grounded in first-hand building analysis, geometric reconstruction, construction history, and advanced methods of digital documentation, including photogrammetry and 3D surveying. The aim is not only to interpret monuments historically, but to reconstruct the technical thinking embedded within them: the logic of construction, the organization of geometry, and the transmission of practical knowledge through building practice itself.

The conference takes place in the exceptional setting of Speyer Cathedral, whose monumental crossing dome represents one of the earliest and most ambitious Romanesque experiments in dome construction. More than a venue, Speyer Cathedral serves as a primary object of investigation. An on-site architectural study conducted within the cathedral forms a central component of the event, transforming the conference itself into an act of direct engagement with the built artifact.

By assembling scholars from across disciplines and regions, the conference aims to challenge established historiographies and reposition medieval dome architecture within a broader global history of construction and design. It proposes the medieval dome not as a transitional form between antiquity and modernity, but as one of the great laboratories of architectural intelligence in human history.