Byzantine Empire!

I feel like Byzantine (!) just needs an exclamation point after it. Which is kind of justified, since the Byzantine Empire was the longest political entity in European history, no small accomplishment! While Christianity remained the major religion in the Byzantine empire, the style of the churches changed under the ruling of the Emperor Justinian. They went from the long and narrow basilica style, to a more centralized style. The most famous example of this being the Hagia Sophia - a church dedicated to the "Wisdom of God".

(Exterior of Hagia Sophia)

The modern day Hagia Sophia is actually the third church that was built on that site, and completed under Justinian's rule. The exterior mixes architectural styles from all around the world (at the time) and the interior is a decorative hodgepodge of materials. 

If you look at modern day images of Hagia Sophia, you can clearly see Arabic text, the reason for this being that the church was turned into a mosque around the 1450's, and although the site is now a museum, the Arabic texts were left from the transition. 

Other Blog discussions- Melanie did a great job differentiating between Christian and Byzantine. She explains how Christianity wasn't really an architectural style, but just has to do with the religion, while Byzantine was about politics and economy. Megan's blog went really in depth on the art of the Byzantine period which I loved. She talks about how it moves in stages and gets away from the typical Roman art.