Neo-Byzantine architecture

It incorporates elements of the Byzantine style associated with Eastern and Orthodox Christian architecture dating from the 5th through 11th centuries, notably that of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and the Exarchate of Ravenna.

Neo-Byzantine architecture emerged in the 1840s in Western Europe and peaked in the last quarter of the 19th century with the Sacré-Coeur Basilica in Paris, and with monumental works in the Russian Empire, and later Bulgaria.

True Byzantine art, popularized by Grigory Gagarin and David Grimm, was adopted by Alexander II of Russia as the de facto official style of the Orthodox Church.

Alexander III changed state preference in favor of Russian Revival trend based on 16th–17th century Moscow and Yaroslavl tradition, yet Byzantine architecture remained a common choice, especially for large cathedrals.

Neo-Byzantine cathedrals concentrated in the western provinces (Poland, Lithuania), the Army bases in Caucasus and Central Asia, the Cossack hosts and the industrial region in Urals around the city of Perm.

Architects David Grimm and Vasily Kosyakov developed a unique national type of a single-dome Byzantine cathedral with four symmetrical pendentive apses that became the de facto standard in the 1880s–1890s.

Earliest examples of emerging Byzantine-Romanesque architecture include the Alexander Nevsky Memorial Church, Potsdam, by Russian architect Vasily Stasov, and the Abbey of Saint Boniface, laid down by Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1835 and completed in 1840.

In 1876 Ludwig II of Bavaria commissioned Neo-Byzantine interiors of the externally Romanesque Neuschwanstein Castle, complete with mosaic images of Justinian I and Greek saints.

The shrine is the largest Catholic church in North America, one of the largest churches in the world,[10] and the tallest habitable building in Washington, D.C.[11][12][13] Its construction of Byzantine Revival and Romanesque Revival architecture began on September 23, 1920, with renowned contractor John McShain and was completed on December 8, 2017, with the dedication and solemn blessing of the Trinity Dome mosaic on December 8, 2017, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, by Cardinal Donald William Wuerl.