Cross-in-square

The cross-domed church is a typical form of the Byzantine church architecture since about the 9th century and is maintained throughout the range of the Orthodox churches to this day. One of the first known large-scale cross-domed churches inaugurated the 881 so-called New Church ( Nea Moni) applies in the imperial palace of Constantinople Opel.

The Naos of a cross-domed church is a square room with four selected columns or pillars supporting the four arranged in the shape of a Greek cross barrel vault and about in the middle of a dome. Technical requirement of cross-domed church is the Pendentifkuppel. The pendentive, spherical triangles, enable to have bear the round dome of a square of four arches. An early and simultaneously the most monumental example is the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople Opel (Istanbul ), even no cross-domed church. In some cross-domed churches, the cross- arms also contribute domes; if all they wear are so five. In a few cross-domed churches, even the aisles bear corresponding corners of the building domes or towers.

These core closes to the east, separated by an iconostasis or iconostasis, a three-part altar ( bema ) with one or three apses on, or it is the eastern arm of the cross with his corner spaces used as a chancel. On the west side is mostly a narthex, occasionally with a loft. Larger cross-domed churches may carry multiple domes and have, especially in the architecture of Constantine Opel, often side chapels and outer porticoes. In monastic churches, first built around 1000 at the Church of the Great Lavra on Mount Athos, the Naos is extended by two lateral apses often.