Dwarf gallery

The Dwarf Gallery ( wrongly called also Zwerchgalerie ( = cross gallery), due to a faulty etymological derivation of Zwerch, an ancient form of side transverse) is a decorative element of the Romanesque architecture.

As a dwarf gallery is called an open arcade just below the base of the roof of a ( church ) building. It extends to parts of buildings, for example, an apse or entire building. At the Speyer Cathedral about a dwarf gallery moves to the entire nave. Although now primarily decorative function, it can also be walked.

The dwarf gallery met for the first time in 1050 on the west facade of the Trier Cathedral, and in 1100 at Speyer Cathedral as an element that runs around the entire building. It develop two variants: the Upper Rhine variant in which, as in Speyer the gangway of the gallery through many small cross- tons is arched, which rest on the pillars of the dwarf gallery. The Lower Rhine version that is used in the churches of Cologne, has a continuous longitudinal ton the other hand behind the gallery arcade. Often it is here connected to the disk frieze. Am Mainzer Dom occur remarkable example both types: the older eastern apse is decorated according to Speyer model with an upper Rhine, the late Romanesque west front with a lower Rhine dwarf gallery.

The dwarf gallery has been taken very quickly as a design element of an outer wall in the Central European architecture, especially in Germany ( Rhineland ) and in Northern and Central Italy - interestingly, not in France. There are churches whose facade consists almost exclusively of superimposed columns galleries, for example, in Tuscany in Arezzo, the Santa Maria della Pieve '. The famous Leaning Tower of Pisa has taken this principle and continued in a particularly decorative form.