Romanesque meets 1960

I found the architecture in this small street of Zamora, Spain very interesting due to its clash of styles.  The 12th century meets face to face (or wall to wall perhaps) with the 1960s.

The Romanesque style (right side of the street) was dominant in Western Europe from the 10th to 12th centuries.  This architectural style is seen as a continuation of Roman architecture and some of its characterisitcs include thick walls, buttresses on the outside walls, rounded arches and barrel vault ceilings.

This very old church building clashes with the modern poured concrete apartment building across the street.  Yet, the picture reveals a desire of modern architecture which it shares with the romanesque style: to reveal and use the building materials as part of the decoration of the structure without concealing them.

Unfortunately the modern building is not as beautiful as the romanesque church even though the principle behind the use of materials is the same.  Modern architecture wished to recover an honesty in architecture where the building materials were not concealed in contrast to the baroque style where marble and plaster covered a simple structure (like Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome).

Below is another picture from Zamora, this one combining romanesque and modernist architecture from the early 1900s, the two styles that dominate in Zamora.