Venezuela
Architecture

Carlos Raúl Villanueva was the most important Venezuelan architect of the modern era; he designed the Central University of Venezuela, (a World Heritage Site) and its Aula Magna. Other notable architectural works include the Capitolio, the Baralt Theatre, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex, and the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge. In Venezuela, prehistoric man began to build useful architecture from approximately 1000 BC to the 15th century AD, in the period known as the "Neo-Indian". Neo-Indian architecture consisted of incipient constructions, such as agricultural terraces and vaults lined by stones, called mintoyes, which were used as tombs and silos for the storage of agricultural products. The Indo-Hispanic architecture is the one that begins to develop from the year 1498 AD. Venezuelan colonial architecture is built from the 16th century, when Venezuela began to be a dependent colony of the Spanish Empire, until 1810, when the process of Venezuelan independence began.

The architecture of this period is characterized by its discreet modesty, with the exception of some cities. The explanation lies in the socioeconomic conditions of the country. Venezuela did not offer then to the colonizers the immense riches kept by nature for later times. The simplification of technical problems, the renunciation of most of the decorative elements and variegated ostentations of fanciful baroque, the impossibility of using expensive materials and the consequent lack of craftsmen, contributed to establish a modest but well-defined physiognomy of the colonial architecture of Venezuela. During the colonial period, there were eventually confrontations between the Spanish conquerors and the barbarians and pirates that sailed along the Venezuelan coasts, in order to take over the provinces located on the coasts of the country.

Christian temples from the colonial era were constituted by an almost invariable, arrangement consisting of a rectangular plan, three naves separated by arches of alfarje roofing composed of religious architecture in colonial times. The Venezuelan society dedicated a great amount of resources to erect religious monuments comparable to those of other countries of the continent. The XVII century was of reconstruction of the Catholic churches that had been destroyed by the earthquake of 1641. In the 18th century, specifically between 1728 and 1785, the prosperity that Venezuela enjoyed due to the opening of the Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas was also reflected in the construction of new architecture, especially of a religious nature.
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