Church
The church at Qalb Lozeh dates back to the 460s AD and is one of the best-preserved churches of this period in the region. The church is the first known in Syria with the wide basilica, where the columns that in traditional Byzantine church architecture separate the aisles from the nave have been replaced with low piers and soaring arches that create the feeling of expanded space. It is strikingly similar in architectural style and craftsmanship to the large pre-Islamic Syrian churches in Turmanin, El Anderin, Ruweha, and Kerratin, which may have been built by the same workshops or guilds.
Gertrude Bell, the intrepid Middle Eastern diplomat, explorer and archaeologist, described this church as "...the beginning of a new chapter in the architecture of the world. The fine and simple beauty of Romanesque was born in North Syria." Since Gertrude Bell's visit in the early 1900s, the town has grown, and the church is now surrounded by modern houses.
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Famous quotes containing the word church:
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
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