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ZARA
Church at Aachen, or of S. Vitale at Ravenna, but without any of S. Vitale’s glorious and glowing decoration. It must always have been a very plain and even rude interior, though of great structural interest. The church is tall in proportion to the circumference of its circular form, and the impression it first gives when one enters is that of a well. Various dates are assigned to it, and there is even talk of a temple of Juno, a legend due to a misread inscription of foreign provenance. In all likelihood, however, the building was the work of Bishop Donatus III., and belongs to the early ninth century (c. 812), about contemporary with Charlemagne, to whom Donatus paid a visit at Aachen. The design is a central circle running up the entire height of the building to a dome, now fallen in and replaced by a wooden roof, which is easily visible as one of the leading features of Zara viewed from outside. Round this central space, the body of the church, runs a circular aisle with three apses opening out of it and immediately facing the entrance. Above this lower circular aisle is another circular aisle carried on columns and very massive square piers, in whose construction highly wrought Roman material, plinths and architraves and capitals, probably from Roman Nona, or possibly from Roman Jadera,