St. Raphael In Greek Architecture

No matter where you look in today’s cities, towns, and communities, one can see similarities of the architecture to those of ancient times. Many of today’s building all across the country have similarities to buildings of the ancient world and does not just appear in the realm of religious institutions, banks, or government buildings. Buildings at Colleges, insurance companies, banquet halls, auditoriums, palaces, temples, castles, monasteries, and even convention centers for example are designed and built to resemble and lay tribute to structures of the past.
When exploring the Cathedral of St. Raphael in downtown Dubuque, it is evident that the design and architecture was inspired by ancient structures from the past. The Byzantine period …show more content…
Although the Cathedral of St. Raphael didn’t need to use these doric columns and barrel vaults as main support system for the architectural integrity, they use elegant cylinder shaped support pillars as design and minor support for the overall structure. Any building that has the Byzantium architectural era identity, it would certainly include artifacts, icons, elegant decorated manuscripts, displays, interior designing, and images that portray beauty, richness, and complexity by using engravings, ivory, marble, gold, and silver, to provide a sense of luxury. Inside the Cathedral at St. Raphael this is truly apparent. You can see gold is used on virtually everything from railings, trim, artwork, wall and column moldings, as well as wall structures. The combination of silver and gold is used on the windows and life like imagery of statues and religious people on the …show more content…
Usually the use of doric columns hamper the interior spacing. St. Raphael Cathedral uses their columns for minor structural support and overall symbolic gesture to the Byzantine era while using it to deliver magnificent spacing. As one can see after vising St. Raphael the inside has a centralized, open feel. This is exactly how buildings of the past in the Byzantine era intended them to be. At first glance it would appear that it is just one big open area. But, in fact it is actually made up of several open spaces combined altogether to make up the tremendous open spacing that resembles structures from that era. Similar to structures in the past, other structural considerations with this cathedral would be the statues mounted to walls, the Stations of the Cross, relics, crosses, carved figures, and wall imagery which is unique to its display at St Raphael. Other locations of interest that are present at this church is the Sacristry and the Reconciliation Chapel which is placed prominently within the spacious layout and design of the church. Once again, unique and varies from location to location based on overall design of the structure. Some locations with basements in modern era would have offices, meeting rooms, class rooms and things designed to be in the basement where buildings long ago may or may not have had underground space or