What should be the best architectual infuence for an ancient city in Northern Europe?

[Deleted member 14396]

Ive been working on a timeline where the Celts and Germanics and Baltics develop an advanced civilization instead of Rome and was wondering what architectual influences I should use for the buildings I was thinking something Indo-European since the migrations into europe maybe some Persian and Northern Indian influenced buildings although Im not sure ?

 

[CobaltKnight]

Indo-European is a linguistic term; very little architecture exists in Bronze or Iron Age Europe that has anything to do with those civilizations in Persia or India...

Celts and Germans loved to build with dirt and their natural environment. Think Hill Forts and Hobbit holes. But in terms of urban living situations, those two things aren't of much use. Nothing beats a good wooden shack with thatched roofs, though! To get large, landscape dominating buildings in Europe would be hard without the Romans, however; anything I can think of would really be more considered a monument.

With no Romans means a stronger Greek influence in western europe! Maybe base some of your ideas off of that and modify them?

I'm sure there are more knowledgeable people on this board than myself on this subject, however.

 

[Alex Richards]

Well, most stone built architecture evolved pretty naturally from existing wood structures (see for example the triglyphs on Greek temples which are a decorative element meant to represent the ends of the original wooden beams).

So you'd probably be looking at an initial situation of more people rebuilding their wooden roundhouse with stone walls (as some of the very high ranking ones OTL were). Cities will probably grow up around a hill fort of some type- the central fort containing some high rank structures where you may well see collections of round buildings linked by corridors. You may also see an independent development of the Broch to give larger towers.

Of course, they also had some rectangular storage structures which may end up dominating, but I think round formats would be more likely.

 

[Monte-Cristo]

Stone buildings derived from these wooden ones (Vsevolod Borisovich Ivanov art: I know, they are of 'mythical' Russian style, but the earliest Rus were Swedes, so...):