There are many models in the entire history of architecture which have
travelled across the world, from one to another part of the big world. For
various reasons, very frequently not at all scientific or professional, in
our part of the world, be it Serbian or Yugoslav, or south Slav, some like to
remain silent, when it comes to the transition of a Byzantine model, which by
nature is rooted in the Orthodox Christian faith at the south east of Europe
and the outmost west of Asia, to their areas, pervaded to a great extent by
the Roman Catholic Christian belief, or Islam. There are numerous evidences
of the transition of a model, one of many which found their new home on the
west-European soil after the fall of Byzantium, mostly after the Crusades,
when looters, but also scientists and artists in Italy, came by new wealth,
and new knowledge, in the capital of the fallen Empire, observing its
magnificent edifices, and taking its parts to their boats and shipping them
to Venice and other cities in Italy and placing them on their buildings and
squares, as they have done with the columns of the Augusteion of
Constantinople, the square dedicated to Justinian's mother Augusta, which now
decorate the square near the famous Venetian church of Saint Marco. Some
other, also numerous accounts, explain how the Ottoman Turkish architecture
in almost the same way, adopted its mosque construction model at the same
place, in the same manner, retaining the actual structures but changing the
religious insignia, or by copying this Byzantine model in building the new
mosques.
Documents on early Christian and Byzantine architecture