The best documented are those of ancient Egypt, where exhaustive work in the 19th and 20th centuries revealed much about both ordinary buildings and monumental structures, such as the pyramid tombs near modern Cairo and the temple and tomb complexes concentrated at Luxor and Thebes. Classical The basic forms of Classical architecture evolved in Greece between the 16th and 2nd centuries BC . The Romans copied and expanded on Greek Classical forms, notably introducing bricks and concrete and developing the vault, arch, and dome for public buildings and aqueducts. It is dominated by the arch and dome, with the Classical orders reduced in importance. Islamic This developed from the 8th century, when the Islamic religion spread from its centre in the Middle East west to Spain and east to China and parts of the Philippine Islands.
Notable features are the development of the tower with dome and the pointed arch.
Romanesque This style flourished in Western European Christianity from the 10th to the 12th centuries. It is marked by churches with massive walls for structural integrity, rounded arches, small windows, and resulting dark volumes of interior space. Romanesque enjoyed a renewal of interest in Europe and the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gothic Gothic architecture emerged out of Romanesque. Gothic architecture was developed mainly in France from the 12th to 16th centuries.