ABSTRACT
Once the Roman Empire ceased to function administratively in the West, there was no central government to commission buildings. Public building nearly stopped during the fifth century and did not resume in any significant way until about 800, with the appearance of Charlemagne. This Carolingian architecture, although consciously built to resemble Roman models, was rather crude compared to the Roman ruins scattered about the old empire. How to carve a true Corinthian capital had been largely forgotten. In the unsettled centuries that followed the end of the Roman Empire, internal divisions and external invasions repeatedly disrupted civil life; civil and religious building forms therefore became both massive defensive refuges from the uncertainties of everyday life and impressive gateways to a promised better afterlife.
