Dome on Greek Orthodox Chapel - Collaboration

Dome on Greek Orthodox Chapel - Collaboration

Carol (Bootiewootsy) is responsible for the elegant results of this photo that I took in Santorini which is one of the small Greek Isles. I would have lost the great stark lines of this shot if she had not agreed to do a collaboration with me.

The dome seems to have developed as roofing for circular mud-brick huts in ancient Mesopotamia about 6000 years ago. In the 14th century bc the Mycenaean Greeks built tombs roofed with steep corbeled domes in the shape of pointed beehives (tholos tombs).

The use of domes was continued in the Early Christian period for relatively small circular structures such as mausoleums and baptisteries. A typical example is the Church of Santa Costanza (350?), Rome, originally the tomb of Constantia, daughter of the emperor Constantine the Great. Byzantine architects were far more inventive in their use of domes. In the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (present-day İstanbul), a succession of large domed churches reached its apogee in Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom), built (532-537) for the emperor Justinian I. Its shallow dome, 31 m (100 ft) wide and ringed with windows at its base, is supported on four pendentives (spherical triangles) backed by immense exterior piers and by a series of half-domes.

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Dome on Greek Orthodox Chapel - Collaboration belongs to the following groups:

Former DPF Members and Religious Art & Photography Available for sale as

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