Architectural styles in chronological order: ten eras with examples

Architecture · 4 September 2026

In order: Antiquity (5th century BC to the 4th century AD), Romanesque (11th–12th centuries), Gothic (12th–16th), Renaissance (15th–16th), Baroque (17th–18th), Neoclassicism and Empire (late 18th to mid-19th), Art Nouveau (1890–1914), Constructivism and Soviet architecture (1920s–1970s), Modernism (1920s–1970s), and High-tech with the contemporary scene (from 1977). Below are the three features that identify each style and the buildings that show them. Every example is in the Buildings by style collection: 255 buildings with year, city and architect.

How to use this list

A style is not a date but a set of decisions: how to span an opening, where to put the weight of the wall, where the light comes from and what counts as ornament. So each style below has three features you can see from the street and the years when it led. The borders are soft: Cologne Cathedral was finished in Gothic in 1880, and Neoclassical porticos were still going up in the 1950s, from Washington to Moscow. When a building fits two descriptions, look at the most telling feature: the window and the arch.

1. Antiquity: 5th century BC to the 4th century AD

Features. A column in one of the three orders, Doric, Ionic or Corinthian; a triangular pediment over the portico; with the Romans, the arch, the vault and the concrete dome. Examples. The Parthenon in Athens (432 BC), the Doric benchmark whose columns lean slightly inward so the building reads as straight. The Pantheon in Rome (AD 126), a 142-foot (43 m) concrete dome that is still the largest unreinforced one in the world. The Colosseum (AD 80) stacks all three orders in tiers. The Maison Carrée in Nîmes, the model Thomas Jefferson used for the Virginia State Capitol, and the aqueduct of Segovia show antiquity beyond Italy and Greece.

2. Romanesque: 11th–12th centuries

Features. Round arches, thick walls with small windows, massive towers, heavy barrel vaults. Examples. Speyer Cathedral (1106), the largest Romanesque church in Europe. Durham Cathedral (1133), the first stone rib vault, from which Gothic would grow. Pisa Cathedral with its leaning tower, Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, Sant'Ambrogio in Milan and the White Tower of the Tower of London.

3. Gothic: 12th–16th centuries

Features. The pointed arch, flying buttresses that hold the wall from outside, and huge stained-glass windows instead of walls. Examples. Chartres Cathedral (1220), where 176 windows of the 13th century are still in place. Notre-Dame de Paris, Reims and Amiens are the French classics; Cologne (1880, from drawings of 1248) and Ulm (530 ft or 161.5 m, the tallest church in the world) the German version; Westminster Abbey and York the English one; the Doge's Palace is Venetian Gothic with its arcades below.

4. Renaissance: 15th–16th centuries

Features. The return of the classical orders, symmetry and clear proportions, a dome modelled on the Pantheon, tiers of rustication on palaces. Examples. The dome of Florence Cathedral (1436) by Brunelleschi, raised without scaffolding. Bramante's Tempietto (1502), the first building of the High Renaissance. Palladio's Villa La Rotonda (1592) with four identical porticos, the model for hundreds of country houses in England and America, Monticello included. The Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the Palazzo Farnese, El Escorial, and in Moscow the Palace of Facets, built by Italians.

5. Baroque and Rococo: 17th–18th centuries

Features. Undulating facades and oval plans, sculpture and gold, light as part of the composition, grand staircases and suites of rooms. Examples. St Peter's Basilica (1626) with Bernini's colonnade. Versailles (1682), the model for European palaces for 150 years. Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, the first wall that "breathes". In Russia, Rastrelli's Winter Palace, Smolny Cathedral and Peterhof. Rococo is its late, light version: the Wieskirche and the Zwinger.

6. Neoclassicism and Empire: late 18th to mid-19th century

Features. A strict portico with a pediment, smooth walls, symmetry; in the Empire style, triumphal arches, military emblems and imperial scale. Examples. The Panthéon in Paris (1790) by Soufflot. The Brandenburg Gate (1791) after the Athenian Propylaea. The United States Capitol, the White House and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington; Kazan Cathedral, the Admiralty and Saint Isaac's in Saint Petersburg; Schinkel's Altes Museum in Berlin and Klenze's Walhalla, a Parthenon above the Danube.

7. Art Nouveau: 1890–1914

Features. Flowing plant-like lines, the "whiplash" curve in railings, majolica, stained glass and wrought iron, a refusal of the right angle. Examples. Gaudí's Casa Batlló (1906), a facade without a straight line. Horta's Hôtel Tassel (1893), the first Art Nouveau building. The Secession Building in Vienna, Otto Wagner's Majolica House, the Palau de la Música Catalana, the Hotel Metropol and the Ryabushinsky mansion in Moscow, the Singer House and Vitebsky station in Saint Petersburg, Eisenstein's houses in Riga.

8. Constructivism and Soviet architecture: 1920s–1970s

Features. In Constructivism, bare function: ribbon windows, cylindrical stair towers, a house on pilotis. In the Stalinist style, spires, tiers and classical ornament at skyscraper scale. In late Soviet modernism, concrete and daring cantilevers. Examples. The Narkomfin Building (1930), the Rusakov Club and the Melnikov House, the Shukhov Tower and Derzhprom in Kharkiv. Then the Seven Sisters, from the main building of Moscow State University to the Hotel Ukraina, and the metro stations Mayakovskaya and Komsomolskaya. The finale: the Ostankino Tower, the State Kremlin Palace and the Ministry of Highways in Tbilisi.

9. Modernism: 1920s–1970s

Features. A flat roof, ribbon windows, a glass curtain wall, a house on columns, no ornament; in Brutalism, raw concrete. Examples. The Bauhaus in Dessau (1926) by Gropius. Villa Tugendhat and the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe. Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel and Unité d'Habitation. Wright's Fallingwater and Guggenheim Museum. The Sydney Opera House, Niemeyer's Brasília, Saarinen's TWA Flight Center and Gateway Arch, Habitat 67 and Louis Kahn's parliament in Dhaka. New York's Art Deco, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, sits on the same line of the timeline.

10. High-tech and the contemporary: from 1977

Features. Structure and services on the outside; later, computer-designed curved shells, glass and titanium, and extreme height. Examples. The Centre Pompidou (1977), the Lloyd's building and HSBC in Hong Kong are high-tech. Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) and Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center are parametric architecture. The Burj Khalifa (2010), the Shanghai Tower and the Lakhta Center are the race for height. The Elbphilharmonie, the Bird's Nest, Marina Bay Sands, Apple Park and the Bosco Verticale are the contemporary scene as it is.

What is in the archive

The Buildings by style collection holds 255 buildings from 35 countries, from the Lion Gate of Mycenae (1250 BC) to the Lakhta Center (2019): each with year, city, architect, a link to its article and a Wikimedia Commons photo with author and free licence. The country filter and architect search let you build your own timeline, say only the United States or only Gaudí. Ancient sanctuaries have their own Ancient temples of the world collection: 124 temples from Göbekli Tepe to the Temple of Heaven.

Open the sections: buildings by style, ancient temples of the world, all categories.