29 Beautiful Domes Around the World Not to Miss
I have always been interested in beautiful domes around the world, gardens and lighthouses. While lighthouses remind me that there is always a glimmer of light to follow in the storm of life, gardens make me feel free. I love the shape and material of domes. Their wonderful architecture is the expression of a historical era. They can be colorful, multifaceted, spherical, squared. I also like the idea of what kind of wonderful masterpiece can be hidden inside a dome. Looking at them from a terrace at sunset while I enjoy a drink is really amazing! Here’s an overview of the most beautiful domes around the world not to miss on your vacation.
1) Gur-e Amir Mausoleum, Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The Mausoleum is the place where the conqueror Timur and some member of his family were buried. There is a curious legend about it: in 1941 the archaeologist Mikhail Gerasimov opened the tomb and confirmed that Timur and his grandson Ulugh Beg were there. He also found an incision that said “Whoever disturbs my tomb will unleash an invader more terrible than I”. Creepy! The gorgeous blue dome is decorated with stars and white dots.
Materials are characterized as either being strong in compression, tension, shear or torsion and used accordingly in building construction. Since Biblical days, the common material available in plentiful supply in Nature was Clay, which, along with its burnt brick or fired clay, stone, marble, slate and plain cement concrete (without the steel reinforcing bars to augment its tensile strength) were therefore predominantly used in Arch, Dome or (Barrel-) Vault designs. As soon as industrial steel production encouraged the use of steel to offer the elegance of steel and glass structures reminiscent of our sky-scraper architecture, the domes were relegated to the class of materials that were in pure compression. Tensile stresses are the cause of cracking. In both an arch form and dome shape, compression is encountered, not tension. Still today, the straw reinforced sunbaked bricks form the bulk of residential construction in Afghanistan and other rural Third-world settlements.
Hi Kris! I received your mail, thank you so much! I am so happy you liked my article 🙂 I’ve seen almost all of these beautiful domes. I’m impressed by your comment! Another unusual dome you would like is the Great Stupa at Sanchi, which is the oldest stone structure in India!
How ironic that you should refer me to a dome that I have visited more often than the others, besides, the Taj Mahal, Jumma Masjid Mosque in India, Humayan’s Tomb, the Gol Gumbaj and a hundred other domes in the Indian subcontinent where I studied Architecture and Townplanning (now called either Urban Design or Urban and Regional Planning) and went on to visit the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, better known as the Golden Dome, before returning home to become a Professor of Architecture. The other domes are predominantly in the Middle-eastern countries including a great one at Herat and another one at Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan. Another new one is under construction at Kabul.
Iran has its share of beautiful mosques with intricate geometric designs and tessellations and in deed, the classic dome of Constantinople (Istanbul) is also a prominent part of Islamic Architecture that made such a creative use of both stone, slate and marble, often imported from a distance but well worth the effort and the cost, even if slave labor was often unfortunately taken advantage of for such grandiose undertakings.
Let’s do an article for publication based on your visits and the excellent portrayal you provided.
What an exciting life Kris! You have seen many domes! It would be great to write an article (you are very kind), but I can only share what I felt when I looked at these beautiful buildings, thinking about their greatness. I didn’t studied Architecture, but it is always awesome learning from people like you! 🙂
These kind of comments must surely be the thoughts of an engineer! I used to know a charming Pakistani engineer whose name was something like Gorur…perhaps you lived in Venice??
When it comes to construction, both architects and engineers have, of necessity, to think alike if the design one comes up with has to eventually be realized in “brick & mortar”, steel or concrete by the other. I have recently come across a firm in California that offers custom-designed domes of plastic of any diameter or thickness.
The more innovative of contemporary domes are the so-called “Geodesic” domes which are not, in the true sense, domes but more of a polyhedral structure, but often ‘clothed’ with fabric, glass or plastics as a cover. They are the inventions of the late, Buckminster Fuller, a former professor at MIT who did not himself have an advanced technical education. Some enterprising school teacher sells his own book and designs of such geodesic domes using common raw bamboo poles.
Fifty years later, I am still fascinated by the older, more historic domes, many of them built with the sweat and blood of captive slave labor forced to carry stone or marble blocks to significant heights, without any sophisticated machinery and aligning them on each layer meticulously to perfection.
I am that kind of person who loves traditions. This is why I’m fascinated by the older domes. They have something to tell about the past and I’m curious to know more and more.
Only 29 more things to add to my Bucket List!
LOL Andrea, I hope you bucket list will be longer and longer! I will work on it 😉