Roman Architecture (cont'd)

-Pontifex (builder of bridges) was the title the Romans gave to their highest priests and later in to the emperors, because the Romans were the greatest bridge builders on antiquity due to widespread application of arches

-Arches were used so much in Roman architecture that they were even used when their presence was not visible as structural support and weight distribution

-Roman engineers also used bases or hollow bricks to reduce weight

-Improvements in the technique used for cutting stones led to the construction of walls with stones having the same size

-In order to strengthen the wall, blocks were placed alternately with the longer side or the shorter side on the face of the wall

-There were also round and triangular bricks which were used to imitate columns and other architectural motifs

-Bricks were relatively expensive and their laying required a lot of manpower: for these reasons in the last centuries of the Roman Empire they used new facing patterns to reduce the use of bricks

-This resulted in a stripe design which characterized the buildings of the Late Empire as showed by the walls of Constantinople. These stripes passed on to Byzantine Art; they then influenced the design of Muslim mosques to finally return to Italy during medieval times