Architecture and Armour in Heritage Discourse: Form, Function, and Symbolism

Abstract

This article proposes a comparative framework for interpreting architectural and armorial artefacts through morphological and symbolic analysis. Focusing on the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance periods, the study explores how buildings and body armour—though differing in scale and function—encode similar cultural values related to protection, identity, and representation. Rather than seeking direct historical transmission, the research reveals convergent design logics shaped by shared symbolic imperatives. Methodologically, the article combines typological comparison with embodied heritage practices. These include experimental reconstruction, traditional stone carving, and field-based conservation conducted through the Ambulance for Monuments (Ambulanța pentru Monumente) programme. Such experiences support a situated understanding of proportion, articulation, and material behaviour in both architecture and armour. By repositioning historical armour as a culturally meaningful artefact rooted in craft knowledge and symbolic logic, the study contributes to current debates in heritage science. It argues for the inclusion of martial objects within broader frameworks of heritage interpretation. The findings highlight how architecture and armour function as co-expressive elements of a shared design culture, offering new insights for research, conservation, and the communication of historical meaning.

1. Introduction

1.1. Scope and Theoretical Framework

Heritage represents the base of the authenticity of the local communities, showing ways of previous life, the beauty as it was understood by the ancestors, and the inheritance that we received to build our modern cities on. The central claim of this paper is a comparative study of architecture and the art of armour, focusing on the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance periods. At the core lies the cultural parallel between architectural form and armorial design. Architecture is approached here not only as a mirror, but as an interface, reflecting the symbolic, functional, and technological systems of a given society [1].

From the outset, it must be emphasized that this article is conceived as a conceptual foundation. Rather than providing an exhaustive catalogue, it proposes a comparative framework that will be further developed through future empirical mapping.

While the article focuses on Romanesque, Gothic, and early Renaissance examples from Western and Central Europe, it does so within the awareness of a broader medieval horizon. From the Carolingian and Ottonian legacies [2,3] to neighbouring cultures such as Byzantium, the Kievan Rus’, Armenia, or the Iberian kingdoms [4], each polity developed its own visual grammar and symbolic systems. The emergence of a Western knightly ethos, rooted in Carolingian and Ottonian foundations, parallelled the consolidation of feudal structures and symbolic grammar across Europe [2,5]. Imperial experiments such as the Ludolfing (Ottonian) polity and the later Hohenstaufen monarchy were not isolated phenomena but part of a broader web of interregional interaction, linking Latin Christendom to neighbouring cultural spheres through conflict, diplomacy, and artistic exchange [4].

Within this layered historical horizon, the present study does not aim to trace direct causal relations but to illuminate recurring symbolic strategies: how mass, structure, and surface articulated identity, legitimacy, and protection across scales, from the fortified city to the armoured body [5].

1.2. Heritage Context and Contemporary Relevance

Recent studies have highlighted the role of medieval fortified architecture in shaping regional identity and heritage-driven tourism in Central and Eastern Europe. Research on Polish castles, for example, has shown how such structures continue to anchor local memory and attract public engagement, serving as visible symbols of continuity and territorial pride [3,6,7].

It must also be acknowledged that Europe has enjoyed an unusually long period of peace over the past eight decades, interrupted only recently by the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Such relative stability has distorted our historical awareness of warfare. Yet, for centuries, warfare was part of lived experience—viscerally present, culturally represented, and materially embedded [8]. This selective memory shapes the way we interpret artefacts of protection, both architectural and martial.

1.3. Towards a New Comparative Reading

While architecture is often studied alongside painting or sculpture, this research proposes a shift of focus towards arms and armour as equally rich cultural artefacts. Designed to protect—or to kill—they interact intimately with the human body through form, proportion, and symbolic charge. Far from being peripheral, these objects reflect entire cultural systems. In this light, architecture is not displaced but enhanced: armour offers an anthropological lens through which historical built form may be interpreted more fully.

At the same time, the present study acknowledges that such a comparative approach may incidentally illuminate the disciplinary marginality of historical armour. While not the main objective, this consequence is both welcome and necessary: by drawing conceptual connections between domains, we may help reposition armour within the broader discourse of design history and heritage science—without presuming to rewrite its disciplinary foundations.

This comparative reading does not imply a direct lineage or causal evolution between buildings and body defences. Rather, it rests on the assumption that both belong to the same semantic universe of visibility, status, and structure. Umberto Eco notes that medieval aesthetics responded to a symbolic logic of clarity, hierarchy, and allegory rather than to modern criteria of originality [9]. In this framework, both cathedral and cuirass became sites of theological and political meaning. Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of visual perception further clarifies how rhythm and structure shape understanding across different media, allowing us to read architecture and armour through similar spatial grammars [10].

Complementing this perspective, Michael Baxandall’s concept of the period eye underscores how visual forms are not merely received but cognitively constructed within culturally specific frameworks [11]. Such a framework enables both architecture and armour to be interpreted as historically embedded design logics shaped by the perceptual habits and symbolic expectations of their time.

Echoing George Kubler’s analysis of formal sequences [12], we argue that these artefacts should be understood as structurally embedded responses to shared cultural imperatives, where rhythm, segmentation, and modulation signal meaning beyond mere function. This approach builds on a longer historiographical tradition: from Viollet-le-Duc and Riegl, who treated form and structure as historical data [13,14], to Panofsky and Giedion, who legitimised analogical reasoning across the arts and sciences [15,16]. Such precedents situate the present comparison within an established scholarly framework, rather than as an isolated interpretive gesture.

The VOSviewer version 1.6.20 bibliometric mapping is employed here strictly as a diagnostic device intended to illustrate the disciplinary disconnect between architectural and armorial studies. It is not presented as the theoretical foundation of the study, but as an auxiliary tool complementing the historiographical and methodological framework. This bibliometric silence reinforces the originality of the present approach, which seeks to bridge this divide through a new morphological and symbolic reading (Figure 1).

The proposed comparison does not treat ornamentation as superficial but as integral. Elements such as swords, shields, pommels, and guards are examined as structural and symbolic counterparts to architectural modules like arches, columns, or cornices. These artefacts emerge from shared systems of fabrication, expression, and ideology, rooted in the same values of defence, representation, and identity [17].

1.4. Clarifying the Central Argument

This study argues that the analogies between ecclesiastical architecture and historical armour are not merely visual coincidences, but expressions of a deeper cultural logic operating on three interconnected levels:

Formal Morphology—Both systems share structural articulation, proportional rhythm, and spatial modulation.

Technological Practice—Both emerge from comparable material constraints and fabrication techniques rooted in embodied craft traditions.

Symbolic Homology—Both encode social identity, divine authority, and protective ideology through ornament and form.

These layers are explored not as isolated themes, but as overlapping dimensions of a shared representational system that shaped medieval and early modern culture (Figure 2).

1.5. Limits and Points of Contact

The aim is not to provide a comprehensive history of military technology. Rather, certain structural analogies—such as between siege engines (e.g., mangonels, ballistae) and large-scale lifting devices in Gothic construction—are proposed as illustrative examples. When supported by iconographic or textual evidence, such parallels may broaden the interpretive toolkit of architectural historiography [18].

The study begins naturally with the Romanesque period, a formative moment of architectural and intellectual consolidation in medieval Europe. This phase followed the decline of the Roman Empire and was marked by cultural synthesis across diverse territories, including the Islamic world, which preserved and transmitted Greco-Roman knowledge through trade, translation, and contact zones such as Cordoba or Norman Sicily.

The Romanesque language of simplified mass, rhythm, and modularity parallelled advances in abstraction and number systems. Around the year 1200, Fibonacci introduced Arabic numerals into European thought, facilitating new approaches to proportion and design. In this context, the repetition of architectural units—arcades, bays, vaults—can be interpreted not merely as stylistic convention, but as formal logic informed by emerging mathematical sensibilities. While proportional and geometric analysis is fundamental to any architectural comparison, it exceeds the scope of this article and will be developed in a separate, extended study.

Importantly, the adoption of Arabic–Indian numerals made possible the precise numbering and differentiation of structural elements, such as vault segments, rafters, or ribs. Without this notational shift, the complexity of Gothic vaulting would have been practically unmanageable. Numbering enabled builders to move beyond Romanesque repetition and toward articulated spatial systems, where each component could be uniquely designed, identified, and assembled.

Building on this interpretive foundation, the next section outlines a methodology that translates these parallels into practice through drawing, reconstruction, and direct heritage engagement.

The scope of this article is deliberately limited: it does not aim to exhaustively document the analogies between architecture and armour across the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance periods. Rather, it proposes a conceptual framework for comparison, highlighting morphological and symbolic correspondences and outlining the directions of future investigation. Many of the analytical dimensions invoked here—such as structural articulation, stylistic proportion, and representational function—are only sketched in this initial study and will be explored in greater depth in a forthcoming extended study focused on typological mapping and historical analysis.

Rather than offering a comprehensive catalogue, the article focuses on emblematic examples—from Gothic cathedrals such as Ulm Minster to late-medieval cuirasses from Italian and German workshops—that best illustrate the conceptual parallels under discussion. These are not exhaustive representations but cultural landmarks that anchor a comparative method, allowing future research to extend the typological and geographical spectrum.

While this paper does not pursue a theological reading per se, it is essential to recall that both ecclesiastical architecture and chivalric armour were produced within a cultural framework deeply imbued with Christian meaning. Sacred buildings embodied cosmological order, divine authority, and salvation, just as knightly armour often featured iconographic and liturgical motifs. The analogies explored here are inseparable from this symbolic universe—even if contemporary scholarly discourse often downplays its centrality.

Yet, despite this shared symbolic framework, historical armour has long occupied a marginal position in academic discourse. Classical and modern historiography alike tended to treat it as a decorative or romantic curiosity, assembled into theatrical displays by Victorian curators, often from parts spanning multiple periods [19]. Serious scholarly attention developed only in the 20th century and matured post-World War II, with the typological and contextual work of Blair, Williams, and Capwell [5,17,20,21,22]. Nicolle’s analysis of Crusading arms and armour (1999) further expanded the geographical and chronological scope of the field [23,24], while Moffat’s recent documentary sourcebooks (2022–2024) have provided a fresh corpus of translated and contextualised primary references [25,26]. This long-standing marginalization echoes in the delayed recognition of related embodied practices of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), reconstructed from fragmented manuals and late fencing traditions only in the early 2000s [27,28,29]. Such cases suggest that the absence of sustained comparison between architecture and armour reflects not a lack of substance but a longstanding epistemic blind spot.

2. Materials and Methods

This article offers a synthetic and comparative exploration and aims to organize and clarify conceptual strands—chronological, geographical, and typological—that will later be developed through expanded historical and applied studies. Specifically, the present work examines analogies between architecture and armour across the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance periods, focusing on form, proportion, ornament, and function.

2.1. Research Framework and Methodological Aim

While architecture and armour differ in material permanence, physical scale, and modes of social deployment, they are both products of the same cultural logic. Emerging within shared systems of representation, technological innovation, and symbolic expression, both artefacts embody the values, constraints, and aspirations of their time. Cultural codes varied across regions and political structures, yet the functional and social roles of protective elites remained broadly comparable across medieval Europe. The comparative method employed here does not reduce either to the other but examines how they articulate similar design principles born not from analogy at the object level but from continuity at the cultural worldview level.

The research methodology is structured around comparative analysis with the goal of identifying formal, structural, and symbolic correspondences between architectural and armorial artefacts. The method involves a typological and visual reading of selected examples—vaults, buttresses, façades, fluting, helmets, scabbards—situated within their historical and material context. These parallels are not treated as visual coincidences but as indicators of shared cultural logics rooted in defence, representation, modularity, and identity.

This approach does not propose documented historical transmission between architecture and armour but interprets their analogies as structurally and symbolically convergent responses to shared cultural imperatives. Illustrations serve as heuristic devices and are grounded in verifiable artefacts—such as effigies, brasses, and metallurgical analyses—which provide measurable data (construction details, rivets, plate thickness) alongside theoretical interpretation. Such juxtapositions—whether set side by side in text or drawing—are not intended as assertions of identity but as heuristic gestures meant to clarify how distinct artefacts may embody comparable logics of form, structure, and meaning.

Such parallels are not only interpretative but supported by measurable data. Metallurgical analyses [5] show that late medieval helmets and cuirasses were deliberately thickened in zones of expected impact: up to 3–4 mm at the forehead and chest, tapering to 1.5–2 mm at the back or sides. Similarly, Gothic vaults were constructed with variable thickness: over 1.2 m at the springing, reducing to 0.3–0.5 m at the keystone [14,30]. Both domains thus demonstrate a comparable logic of material distribution, whereby protective efficiency was achieved not by uniform mass but by calibrated thickness in relation to structural forces. Recent archaeometallurgical work on the Laval armour confirms that such calibrated thickness was deliberate, reflecting a sophisticated understanding of material behaviour comparable to the modulation of Gothic vaults [31]. Although far less famous than Gothic cathedrals such as Notre Dame, the Laval armour represents one of the very few complete late-medieval French harnesses to survive. Its importance lies precisely in this rarity: unlike the well-documented Italian and German workshops, France preserves only fragmentary examples, making this suit a unique benchmark for archaeometallurgical study and for understanding calibrated design logics in armour.

In the absence of systematic metrological surveys on medieval and early modern European armour (c. 1066–1700), a possible methodological pathway for future work is illustrated by the comparative study of Lazar and Kraner [32], which provides detailed thickness mapping of eight breastplates (early 16th to mid-19th century), complemented by 3D modelling to estimate wearer dimensions. On the architectural side, surveys, such as those of Luo [33], Ibrahimkhil [34], and Sánchez-Aparicio [35], illustrate how laser scanning and point-cloud analysis can deliver millimetre-level accuracy, geometric modelling, and damage diagnostics. Taken together, these approaches suggest a comparative metric through which both armour and built structures can be evaluated in metrical terms within heritage science.

The article also functions as a platform for synthesizing preliminary data, reflections, and visual references ahead of further in-depth research, which will include hands-on experimental reconstruction and drawing-based typological mapping.

To maintain analytical coherence and avoid overgeneralization, the study deliberately limits its scope to a curated set of emblematic examples, chosen not for exhaustive coverage but for their illustrative clarity and potential to anchor further typological exploration.

2.2. Empirical Background and Craft-Based Experience

The comparison between architecture and armour does not claim identity of forms but parallel expression within a shared cultural and symbolic horizon. Armour is interpreted here through the language of architecture, not to assert imitation, but to highlight convergences of meaning: both are protective envelopes, lived experiences, mediators between the individual, the community, and transcendence. Craft-based practice has informed the analysis, but it is presented only as a heuristic complement to typological and historiographical research, not as a substitute for verifiable data.

2.2.1. Experimental Documentation and Reconstruction

This research engages with heritage science through experimental documentation and historically informed reconstruction. Access to museum collections will be used to conduct non-invasive measurements—such as weight, wall thickness, and geometric profiling of armour components—supplemented, where permitted, by high-resolution 3D scanning.

Based on initial practical reconstruction work, selected elements have been reconstructed using period-appropriate tools and techniques. Metal sheets were cut with chisels rather than modern saws; drilling was performed with hand-cranked mechanisms; heating employed charcoal forges; and shaping relied exclusively on manual hammers. Although not forged from raw bar stock, these methods prioritized accuracy of form and historical tool use over industrial replication. The goal was not to produce museum replicas or reenactment gear but to create cognitive artefacts—functional reconstructions that offer insight into ergonomics, visual language, and fabrication logic. These practical tests have supported the analysis of proportion, articulation, and surface behaviour, linking empirical observation with embodied understanding.

In this way, experimental reconstruction becomes a form of heritage documentation, complementing analytical drawing and terminological research by anchoring the artefact within a performative material framework. Thus, material engagement becomes not merely illustrative but foundational for interpreting the shared structural and symbolic logic of architecture and armour.

2.2.2. Stone Carving and Intergenerational Craft Knowledge

The research is also based on the practical work of the authors in the field of architectural stone restoration, gaining practical experience on-site at Bánffy Castle in Bonțida (Cluj County, Romania). Initial training was carried out on discarded blocks, with later contributions including levelling voussoirs above a main entrance arch and sculptural repairs on a capital using lime mortar and embedded copper wire. All work was carried out using hand tools—chisels, mallets, and measuring squares—following historically informed methods. While modern steel tools exceeded medieval standards, the gestures and techniques employed replicated pre-modern practice.

The experience was shaped by mentorship from master stonemason A. P., then already involved in the restoration of the principal Romanesque façade of the Alba Iulia Cathedral. The 2004 workshop, organized by the Transylvania Trust Foundation, exemplified a direct and informal model of knowledge transfer. Through daily collaboration and on-site experimentation, a tactile understanding of proportion, rhythm, and surface articulation was developed—essential skills that support both architectural interpretation and comparative reconstruction.

This formative engagement grounds the research in embodied craft knowledge, reaffirming the value of intergenerational transmission as a methodological pillar. While not data-driven in the conventional sense, this process is explicitly framed as complementary, offering embodied insight that supports rather than replaces systematic analysis.

2.2.3. Field-Based Heritage Practice: Ambulanța Pentru Monumente (Bihor)

The third methodological strand builds on practical heritage engagement in real-world contexts, where analogical thinking emerges not from controlled settings but from responsive, situated action. Two of the authors have been actively involved in field-based heritage intervention through the Ambulance for Monuments (Ambulanța pentru Monumente) initiative in Bihor County, a grassroots network focused on the emergency stabilization of endangered historic structures, particularly wooden churches. Between 2023 and 2024, four such buildings were consolidated through coordinated interventions involving diagnosis, dismantling, and repair.

Tasks included removing deteriorated shingle roofs, salvaging usable materials, and installing new structural elements using only hand tools, in accordance with conservation guidelines for fragile timber architecture. Repair strategies were adapted in real time, based on local conditions, traditional techniques, and tactile material feedback. Key lessons included sequencing disassembly to avoid collapse, preserving original nails or laths where possible, and retightening sagging frameworks with oak pegs.

Work proceeded only where local communities were receptive and authorities agreed to support some of the material costs. The technical process was guided by visual diagnosis, on-site surveys, and degradation mapping. Despite the informality of the conditions, the ethical stance remained consistent: reuse when possible, replace only when necessary, and intervene with restraint.

This engagement reflects a philosophy of use—prioritizing humility, adaptability, and material sensitivity. It reinforces the methodological core of this study: that analogies between architecture and armour can only be meaningfully explored through active, situated, and tactile forms of knowledge. Such field-based practice complements experimental and craft-based methods by grounding comparative analysis in lived constraints and material feedback, bridging conceptual analogy with embodied, context-aware decision-making.

2.3. Heritage Science Relevance

This research aligns with the aims of heritage science by contributing to the interpretation, documentation, and communication of cultural artefacts—particularly in cases where material evidence is fragmented, endangered, or contextually obscure. The methodological structure developed here supports comparative reading across disciplines and object types, fostering critical awareness of shared formal languages and symbolic codes.

By framing historical armour as a form of mobile architecture, and architectural detail as a form of embodied defence and identity, the article proposes a new pathway for understanding heritage artefacts as part of a transdisciplinary visual logic. This logic can support not only academic interpretation but also future conservation strategies and education-based transmission of traditional knowledge systems.

Taken together, the practical engagements described above—experimental reconstruction, craft-based stonework, and field intervention—form more than background context: they constitute an applied research method. These embodied practices generate situated knowledge about design, proportion, and material behaviour, complementing analytical drawing and comparative reading. In this framework, making becomes thinking: material engagement functions as a form of inquiry capable of revealing design logics that elude purely textual or visual analysis.

3. Results

3.1. Comparative Framework: Reading Across Categories

Before delving into the historical periods themselves, it may be helpful to pause and clarify the comparative lens through which architecture and armour are read in this study. Though the article unfolds as a narrative, shaped by material, geography, and chronology, it returns—again and again—to four recurring themes that tie together the built and the worn, the sacred and the martial:

• Form and Structure—How mass, rhythm, and articulation define both a cathedral’s envelope and a cuirass’s silhouette.
• Ornament and Surface—How tracery, engraving, or fluting transformed mere function into meaning, echoing the structural rhythm and surface logic of Gothic vaults and late-medieval plate armour [21].
• Function and Use—How weight, ergonomics, and defensive logic govern the shaping of both space and steel.
• Symbolic Meaning—How each artefact—whether wall or helm—encodes authority, devotion, and identity.

These categories are not imposed as a rigid scaffold but emerge organically across the case studies. They offer a rhythm of reading, not a cage of analysis—a way to follow the echo of an arch in the curve of a visor, or the logic of a vault in the fold of a backplate.

By making this structure explicit, the aim is not to reduce the richness of interpretation but to invite the reader into a deeper comparative awareness—one that recognizes architecture and armour as twin expressions of a shared cultural imagination.

To support this comparative approach, the following table summarizes the recurrent correspondences between architecture and armour across the three historical periods analysed.

Table 1. Comparative table—architecture and armour (Romanesque–Gothic–Renaissance).

Category	Romanesque	Gothic	Renaissance
Form and Structure	- Semicircular arches, massive volumes (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire) - Compact keeps - Mail hauberks, cylindrical spangenhelms	- Ribbed vaults, pointed arches, vertical thrust (Chartres, Halberstadt) - Stepped bastions (Crac des Chevaliers) - Fluted cuirasses, “hounskull” helmets	- Classical symmetry (Palazzo Rucellai, San Lorenzo) - Rusticated urban fortresses (Palazzo Medici) - Smooth Milanese plate with Roman details
Ornament and Surface	- Symbolic relief sculpture (Moissac) - Simple engraved crosses on arms and shields	- Tracery, rose windows, sculptural programs (Notre Dame, Ulm Minster) - Etched floral or heraldic motifs - Decorative fluting and articulated fasteners	- Friezes, triglyphs, classical orders - Engraved cuirasses with vegetal or mythological themes - Shields with medallions of Hercules or Mars
Function and Use	- Passive fortification through mass - Restrictive protection for frontal shock combat	- Fully articulated plate suits, optimized for movement (e.g., German Gothic harness, c. 1480) - Dual-purpose sacred/military spaces (Marienburg Castle)	- Ceremonial and parade armour (e.g., François I, Maximilian I) - Civic buildings for prestige and display (Piazza della Signoria)
Symbolic Meaning	- Sacred enclosure, divine protection - The knight as guardian of the faith (Roland, Santiago)	- Transcendence through light and elevation - Chivalric armour as visual ethics code and noble identity marker	- Humanist ideal: the knight as vir virtutis - Architecture and armour as rationalized expressions of civic virtue and status

is not intended as an exhaustive classification but as a heuristic tool—an interpretive map that highlights structural, functional, and symbolic parallels for the reader’s benefit.

3.2. The Romanesque Synthesis: Armour and Architecture in Convergence

In the aftermath of the Carolingian era, the Norman knight emerged as a figure of military and cultural synthesis. Drawing on legendary prototypes such as Roland, the Normans forged an elite warrior identity that extended beyond combat, shaping the architecture and territorial governance of post-”Dark Age” Europe. Their influence reached deep into the built environment, coinciding with the First Crusades, which accelerated the exchange of forms and symbols between Christian Europe and the Islamic world [36,37].

Martial equipment in the Romanesque period reflected a logic of repetition and bodily enclosure: mail consisted of interlinked rings, and helmets—such as the spangenhelm—offered full coverage through compact geometric configurations. Later, the great helm introduced a monumental visual identity to the knight [5]. This modular, enclosing logic found an architectural counterpart in the Romanesque use of arcades, vaults, and semicircular arches.

In England, Norman conquests translated into fortified cathedrals and urban restructuring. These were not passive imitations of continental models but instruments of political centralization expressed architecturally [37].

The knight’s armour and the Romanesque church both relied on rhythmic repetition and symbolic mass. The semicircular arch and the protective helm exemplify a shared understanding of structure as a sanctified envelope—one guarding the body, the other the altar (Figure 3). Beyond ecclesiastical structures, Romanesque design principles extended into noble residences, where great halls and donjons mirrored the same logic of mass, enclosure, and rhythm. These civic and domestic spaces, while less symbolically charged than cathedrals, nevertheless relied on similar strategies of defensive articulation and identity signalling. Thick walls, corbelled turrets, and sequential thresholds can be read in parallel with overlapping layers of mail and segmented helmets, both serving to protect status and define internal hierarchies.

3.3. Crac Des Chevaliers and the Knight as a Fortified Body

A paradigmatic case linking architecture and armour is the Crac des Chevaliers, a fortress situated in modern-day Syria controlling the Homs Gap and the routes between the Mediterranean and the Orontes Valley. Originally a Kurdish stronghold (Ḥiṣn al-Akrād), it was captured by the Crusaders in 1110 and entrusted to the Knights Hospitaller in 1142 [38]. Over the next century, the Hospitallers transformed it into one of the most formidable concentric castles of the medieval world.

The fortress underwent major expansions in two phases: the inner ward was constructed in the mid-12th century with a rectangular plan and strong corner towers; and the outer curtain wall and elaborate entrance complex were added in the early 13th century. These outer defences included massive round towers, bent entrances, and machicolations, exemplifying advanced knowledge of layered defence. The design prioritized depth of resistance, forcing attackers to pass through successive defended spaces, mirroring the layered logic of knightly protection [4,39,40].

Its concentric bastions, multi-gate systems, and compacted mass illustrate a defensive logic that is echoed, at human scale, in knightly equipment of the same era. Although full plate armour was not yet developed, Crusader knights wore modular layers—mail hauberks, coifs, nasal helms, large Norman shields, and limb protectors—adapted according to tactical needs [5,41]. This defensive zoning parallels the strategic distribution of forces in Crusader fortifications [42]. In later centuries, especially during tournaments, armour evolved into an elaborate medium of symbolic display, often prioritizing aesthetics over functionality [43].

Even visually, armour and architecture communicated identity. Heraldic shields mirrored fortress façades adorned with coats of arms or Latin inscriptions [38,42]. Just as Crac’s crenelations and stone mass projected institutional strength [3], so too did a knight’s armoured body operate as a decorated surface for representation, where heraldic devices, etched ornament, and structural articulation encoded ideological meaning [22].

In this shared logic, both armour and fortress became temples of protection: one presenting the body as a visible structure of authority, the other enclosing the community within stone [44].

3.4. From Romanesque Mass to Gothic Modulation: Parallel Evolutions in Architecture and Armour

The evolution from Romanesque to Gothic involved both structural innovation and cross-cultural blending. At Cefalù, pointed arches emerged from overlapping semicircular geometries, prefiguring Gothic logic [3]. The introduction of buttresses and the elevation of interior space culminated at Saint-Denis under Abbot Suger, where light and verticality became theological expressions [45]. Armour followed a similar path. New components—forearm splints, torso plates, greaves—gradually coalesced into a full plate harness, turning the knight into a fully encased figure of rank and symbolic virtue [5,17].

The Crusades and Reconquista catalysed the transmission of architectural and armorial forms. Crusader castles such as Crac des Chevaliers integrated Islamic and Byzantine elements: machicolations, polygonal towers, and decorative battlements [46]. In the Iberian Peninsula, Christian fortresses absorbed Andalusi geometries, giving rise to the mudejar style—simultaneously defensive and ornamental [47].

Armour, too, reflected this exchange. Iberian and southern Italian knights wore hybrid equipment—clipped-edge shields, conical helms with Arabic ornament, and textile elements drawn from Islamic workshops [48]. These artefacts transcended function to signal affiliation, exchange, and hybrid identity.

In both sacred and palatial architecture, the transition from Romanesque to Gothic brought a progressive refinement of upper enclosures. Romanesque buildings such as Cluny III or the Palatine Chapel relied on heavy barrel and groin vaults, with thick walls and minimal fenestration. In contrast, mature Gothic articulation introduced ribbed vaults and flying buttresses, enabling taller structures and expanded windows, culminating in complex vaults like those of Notre-Dame de Paris or the Sondergotik in Germany. This shift combined structural innovation with theological symbolism: space became lighter, more dynamic, and ideologically elevated. Recent research on the early vaults of Notre Dame [49] demonstrates that this refinement relied on the precise modulation of thickness—an approach comparable to the calibrated distribution of mass in Gothic armour, and one that mirrors the systematically articulated ribs revealed by geometry-based typologies of late Gothic net vaults [50].

A parallel evolution occurred in armour. The transformation from laminar plates to fluted anatomical surfaces mirrored the architectural move from mass to modulation. Vertical ridges in cuirasses and helmets, much like ribs and mullions in cathedrals, reinforced structure while visually elongating the form, projecting both physical authority and social rank.

This shared emphasis on elevation extended to proportion. Gothic cathedrals favoured vertical ratios, as seen in Cologne or Beauvais, while armour narrowed the body’s silhouette and lifted the chest and neck line, emphasizing stature and dominance. Decorative programs followed similar logic: intricate tracery and sculptural narratives adorned church façades, just as armour bore etched heraldry, embossed motifs, and architectural ornament—niches, crockets, even miniature pinnacles—especially in German and Italian courts.

These were not mere aesthetic embellishments but embodied expressions of function and authority. In both domains, structure and surface articulated meaning. Gothic buildings elevated the soul through form; armour elevated the individual as a symbolic figure, chivalric, political, or spiritual. The logic of layered articulation—manifested architecturally in elements such as vaulted galleries and parapets at sites like Crac des Chevaliers—echoes the modular construction of later medieval armour, where superimposed plates structured both movement and meaning. Likewise, the vertical rhythms and decorative richness of Milan Cathedral resonate with the flamboyant parade armours of the Burgundian and Italian courts. Across scale and function, architecture and armour converged into expressive systems of identity, hierarchy, and transcendence.

3.5. The Gothic Peak: A Mobile Cathedral for the Body

By the 14th century, Gothic architecture achieved structural and visual complexity through vertical networks of ribs, net vaults, and façades of carved stone lace [51,52]. Parallel to this, full plate armour became an architectural system in miniature—layered, proportioned, and modulated for both defence and display [17,53].

German and Burgundian suits featured ridges and flutings echoing the dynamic buttresses of Gothic churches [17]. The knight’s body was not merely protected—it was encased in a moving structure governed by rhythm, geometry, and symbolic clarity [54] (Figure 4).

This analogy extended into ceremonial and funerary contexts. Sculpted effigies in Gothic churches portrayed knights as spiritual guardians, clad in detailed, stylized armour. Crested helmets functioned like architectural spires—visual markers of identity, hierarchy, and sacrality [55,56].

This diagram explores the converging logic of fluting, rhythm, and force distribution in late Gothic design. On the left, the fluted backplate and pauldrons (made by Lorenz Helmschmied) channel pressure along controlled, expressive lines that both articulate the body and reinforce its structure. On the right, the vaulting system of Halberstadt Cathedral (1236–1491) mirrors this logic: ribs and buttresses absorb and redirect vertical forces with calculated lightness.

Beyond visual rhythm, the ridges and fluting present in both Gothic architecture and late-medieval armour serve a clear structural function: they increase rigidity and channel force along controlled vectors. In stone, these elements manage gravitational and lateral stress—such as wind or seismic activity—while in steel, they dissipate kinetic impact and concentrate strength where needed. This structural rhythm becomes spatial: vault ribs, clustered columns, and layered side aisles do not merely decorate space but fold it, guiding loads, defining volumes, and shaping transitions. Likewise, the vertical fluting of breastplates and greaves mirrors the upward thrust of Gothic window mullions and buttresses, turning surfaces into frameworks of articulated support. In both cases, mass becomes modulation; structure becomes legible articulation.

The extreme case of Beauvais Cathedral, recently reassessed as both ambition and collapse [57], epitomises this layered evolution: its daring Gothic lightness pushed structural innovation to the point of fragility, just as contemporary armourers pursued thinner plates and elaborate fluting at the limits of material resistance.

Unlike masonry, which negotiates space through assembled articulations, armour begins as flat plate and must be plastically deformed into compound curves, often incorporating both longitudinal fluting and transverse folding. This transformation, executed by hand and eye, represents the high technology of its time: an empirical command of double curvature, material elasticity, and reinforcement without excess. The pleated geometry of both systems—stone and steel—embodies a logic of structural intelligence rooted in constraint, not abstraction. The design sophistication achieved by Gothic builders—through force diagramming, applied geometry, and modular coordination—marked a technological apex that would not be matched until the speculative spatial manipulations of the late Baroque. Between these two peaks, much of early modern architecture prioritized visual order and inherited proportion over structural invention. Yet both armourers and Gothic architects pursued the same goal: form through force, elegance through resistance, and meaning through material.

3.6. Renaissance Symmetries: Classical Revival in Armour and Architecture

The Renaissance introduced a deliberate reconfiguration of both architecture and armour through the revival of classical ideals. Architectural orders were reinterpreted with renewed mathematical clarity, emphasizing proportion, modularity, and harmony [58]. Rusticated masonry became a symbol of strength and permanence in fortifications and civic buildings—an aesthetic echoed in the articulated surfaces of Italian plate armour, which fused function with monumental gravitas [59]. Armour crafted in Milan, Brescia, and Florence during the 15th and 16th centuries reached levels of refinement comparable to contemporary palatial architecture. Surfaces were smooth, engraved with friezes, triglyphs, or volutes, drawing directly from Roman vocabulary. In this context, the knight became a vir virtutis—an ideal man in whom beauty, structure, and moral order coalesced [17,58]. Beyond metallurgical studies of weapon manufacture [60], decorative practices also reveal striking analogies with architectural vocabularies. A falchion by the Brescian master Faustino Ghelfo, dated to the early 16th century, displays a blade covered with deep semi-circular niches (incavature) and a gilt-embellished hilt—ornamentation directly comparable to the friezes and rhythmic mouldings of Renaissance façades [61].

In England, the Tudor period similarly developed a visual vocabulary of status and virtue through armour. Tudor armours, often worn at courtly events and tournaments, fused continental forms with local heraldic emphasis, as exemplified in the richly decorated suits of Henry VIII’s reign [62].

This cultural logic also extended retroactively into late Gothic designs. Burgundian fluted armour, for instance, reinforced structure while reducing weight, just as flying buttresses liberated wall surfaces in cathedral architecture. These interplays between structural ingenuity and symbolic form defined a unified system of power and aesthetics, later disrupted by revolutionary uniformity in post-medieval France [17,59].

A notable Eastern parallel is found in the figure of Mircea the Elder (Mircea cel Bătrân). Historical records and Orthodox votive paintings depict him as a Western-style knight, clad in Milanese armour. The presence of detailed Gothic knee defences (poleyns) in these images signals trade links and ideological alignment between Wallachia and the main European armour-producing centres [56,63].

This vision of proportion as a moral and structural principle extended beyond architecture and armour, influencing other embodied disciplines of the Renaissance.

3.7. Memorialisation in Stone and Steel

Continuing the exploration of embodied symbolism, funerary effigies represent a convergence of architecture, armour, and memorial design, preserving idealized forms of social identity in sculpted permanence.

Beyond their symbolic role, effigies preserve measurable construction details—such as rivet patterns, plate articulation, and proportions—that can be objectively compared with surviving metal pieces. As already noted with regard to plate thickness, such correspondences confirm that stone and steel together provide complementary evidence while also reminding us that organic components like leather straps or textile linings, now decayed, cannot be directly measured. This balance allows symbolic interpretation to be grounded in observable features without overlooking material limits.

Funerary effigies offer some of the most compelling intersections between armour and architecture. Sculpted slabs, often preserved in Transylvania and Central Europe, portray aristocratic figures integrated within sacred space, wearing ceremonial armours that echo architectural massing and rhythm. Helmets with crests function symbolically like spires or tympana, crowning the knight’s presence with institutional and personal heraldry [55,56].

This study deliberately privileges high-quality, workshop-crafted armour, just as architectural history often prioritizes cathedrals or palaces over vernacular structures. These elite artefacts, whether worn or built, reflect aspirational values more clearly than mass-produced or utilitarian forms [19].

From a geographical perspective, armour production followed defined economic circuits. Milanese and German workshops supplied much of Europe’s noble clientele, while peripheral regions like Eastern Europe depended on imports. This dynamic mirrors architectural diffusion: Italian and French design models were exported through guilds, pattern books, and diplomatic networks, shaping peripheral built environments in a similar logic of form-as-knowledge [17,64].

This interplay between core and periphery—visible in both armour production and architectural diffusion—reflects a shared logic of form-as-knowledge, where artefacts encoded not only protection but affiliation, aspiration, and cultural transmission. Stone structures likewise embody permanence and calibrated construction: Gothic vaults thickened at their supports and tapering to slender keystones, or Renaissance domes adjusted for thrust, mirror the rationality by which helmets and cuirasses were thickened at the forehead and chest while thinning at the flanks [5,30]. Such calibrations are at once technical and symbolic, embodying the will to endure through matter, and reinforcing the dialogue between memorialisation in stone and in steel.

3.8. Ornament, Structure, and Symbol: Formal Analogies

To consolidate the analogies traced so far, the following comparative reading aligns specific architectural and armorial elements based on structural logic and symbolic function. Numerous structural analogies link medieval architecture and armour. These correspondences are not accidental but reflect a shared cultural substrate shaped by common material limitations, symbolic ideals, and rational design thinking. Both disciplines express a coherent logic of defence, identity, and spatial ideology [65].

A telling example is the parallel between the semicircular Romanesque arch and the vaulted helmet (spangenhelm, later great helm): both use curvature to absorb and distribute impact, and both frame what is sacred, whether altar or head [66]. In Gothic architecture, this analogy intensifies. The flying buttress, which liberated interior space and enabled verticality, finds a counterpart in longitudinal fluting in armour—thinning metal plates without compromising strength [17,67].

Decoration follows similar logic. Gothic façades were richly carved with friezes, statuary, and tracery, while noble armour was etched, gilded, and inlaid, transcending function to signal power, virtue, and lineage [17]. Panels of carved limestone on cathedral façades parallel the modular plates of ceremonial armour [68]. Just as architectural panels contribute to the overall narrative and articulation of a façade, armour plates shape bodily curvature while segmenting symbolic zones—torso, limbs, joints—into readable visual modules. Within these façades, stained-glass windows served as both narrative and light-filtering devices, just like enamelled pommels or crests on helmets filtered vision and meaning [67,69]. Tracery, with its delicate linearity and compartmentalized geometry, finds a visual counterpart in the etched motifs and pierced edges of parade armour, particularly in German Gothic designs. In many cases, the decorative motifs are not merely analogous but effectively interchangeable, featuring identical elements such as trefoils, quatrefoils, and ogee arches.

This analogy extends even to colour and material finish. In southern Europe, façades were often painted; northern statuary retained traces of pigment. Similarly, armours were gilded, enamelled, and selectively oxidized, producing symbolic contrast through light and surface treatment [5,17].

Verticality also served symbolic functions. Just as spires signal presence in the medieval skyline, helmet crests rise above the body to assert identity. Both operate as markers of hierarchy and recognition, elevated above the body or building to command attention [70].

A culminating example of this visual–structural synthesis is Maximilian armour: rhythmically fluted, tailored to the body, and ornamented with engravings reflecting Renaissance design principles. Sources suggest that Albrecht Dürer contributed to its conception—an intersection of architectural theory and armourer’s craft [64].

The parallels outlined above—structural, symbolic, and ornamental—suggest a coherent cultural logic across architecture and armour. To fully understand these correspondences, one must now turn from form to context: to the historical, ideological, and regional frameworks that shaped their meaning and evolution.

While the preceding sections have followed a chronological structure, the core comparative logic operates across historical periods.

Table 2. Morphological and functional correspondences between architectural and armorial elements.

Architectural Element	Armorial Element	Shared Function/Logic
Vault rib	Fluting (cuirass, greaves)	Force distribution, rhythm, visual articulation
Buttress (flying or solid)	Shoulder/hip articulation	Lateral stabilization, redirection of load
Vertical pier/solid buttress	Leather straps, internal braces	Hidden support, structural anchoring, mass modulation
Windows/tracery	Etched decoration	Iconographic surface, symbolic inscription
Rose window (Romanesque/Gothic)	Besague/Rondel (axillary disc)	Circular articulation between major volumes; symbolic and structural transition
Portal tympanum	Decorated scabbard	Narrative display, threshold symbolism
Spire/pinnacle	Helmet crest	Vertical identity marker, status display
Modular façade panels	Armour plates (torso, limbs)	Segmentation, protection, hierarchy
Mouldings/engaged columns	Spaulders/vambraces	Layering, movement articulation, decorative framing
Polychrome finishes	Gilding enamel	Visual contrast, symbolic colouring

distils key correspondences between architectural and armorial elements, emphasizing how shared functions of support, articulation, and symbolic display recur across form and scale.

4. Discussion

Although the historical analysis unfolds chronologically—from Romanesque to Renaissance—the comparative framework remains transversal, allowing for recurring structural, functional, and symbolic parallels to be read across periods and typologies.

4.1. Beyond Rupture: Continuity Between Gothic and Renaissance

The shift from Gothic to Renaissance in both architecture and armour was less a rupture than a layered evolution. Figures like Nicola and Andrea Pisano already displayed Renaissance sensibilities—balance, volume, narrative—in the 13th century, revealing how technological and symbolic refinements developed gradually within overlapping traditions [71].

The term Gothic, introduced pejoratively by Giorgio Vasari, reflected cultural tensions. He equated it with lavoro tedesco—a “barbaric” Germanic deviation from classical norms [59]. In post-Reformation Central Europe, where religious iconoclasm stripped churches of imagery, Gothic came to be viewed as an austere, even “dark” style.

Meanwhile, the prestige of classical proportion led Western courts—including England—to import Milanese and Brescian armours, which embodied a rationalized, codified aesthetic [17].

4.2. Mobility and Exchange: Condottieri, Reputations, and Cross-Border Gear

Following the Hundred Years’ War, veterans often entered service as condottieri in Italy, where civic militias were weak but visual prestige was strong. Military success was often tied to reputation, not combat alone [72].

This cultural blending is visible in the Florentine monument of John Hawkwood, a northern mercenary represented through Italian visual codes. Similarly, English knights of the Wars of the Roses wore a mix of Italian, German, and local armour. The “Perpendicular” Gothic style in English architecture echoed this eclectic, transnational formalism.

These transregional movements of mercenaries and materials did not merely alter the battlefield—they transported styles, techniques, and symbolic grammars, allowing the architectural and armorial languages of power to migrate and hybridize across Europe, often with military architects among their agents.

Contemporary scholarship confirms that export armours were often aesthetic hybrids—for example, French workshops imitated Italian forms but retained local construction details when producing for English clients. Such cases illustrate circulation and adaptation across borders rather than stylistic contradiction.

4.3. Romanian Principalities: Peripheral Evidence and Central Questions

In Wallachia and Moldavia, medieval military organization was relatively structured, relying on mobilized freemen (voinici) who supplied basic gear [73]. The effectiveness of Wallachian cavalry under Mircea the Elder suggests partial equipment with Western-style armour, supported by Transylvanian trade records documenting military goods crossing the border [63].

Renaissance architectural elements are visible specifically in the church of Dealu Monastery, with pilasters and classical proportions indicating receptivity to Western models. Though no complete armours survive, votive portraits likely depict contemporary elite attire, which is worthy of future research into the evolution of princely costume.

Built under Radu cel Mare (r. 1495–1508), the church of Dealu Monastery exemplifies the synthesis of classical order and local material logic. With its high plinth, blind arcades, and volumetric articulation—framed by pilasters and crowned by drum-based turrets—it offers a late medieval vision of controlled mass, verticality, and sacred identity, paralleling the symbolic layering of contemporary nobiliary armour, which in Wallachia likely served both representational and practical purposes, given its exceptional cost and limited availability.

Even in absence, the shadow of architectural and armorial logic survives, fragmented in surviving structures, iconography, and proportions, yet traceable in design residues. Comparable fragmentary assemblages—such as the remains of armour from Kozlov Rob in Slovenia—illustrate how partial material evidence can complement iconographic and textual sources in reconstructing martial culture [74].

From the 17th century, however, symbolic orientation shifted eastward. The Ottoman court, a cultural synthesis of Persian, Byzantine, and Islamic traditions, redefined ceremonial display. At Topkapı Palace, spatial planning expressed political hierarchy, blending military and architectural symbolism [75].

4.4. Marginal Historiography and the Need for Recovery

The study of arms and armour in Romanian historiography remains underdeveloped, often overshadowed by political and institutional narratives. A notable exception is the extensive work of Adrian Andrei Rusu, whose contributions span iconography, material culture, and symbolic interpretation. His analyses range from mural depictions of armed figures and knightly effigies to artefacts such as Transylvanian stove tiles and weapon fragments, all contextualized within a broader understanding of medieval societal structures and artistic production [76]. Together with C. M. Vlădescu’s foundational studies from the 1970s on Wallachian weaponry [77], Rusu’s research provides essential reference points for any future inquiry into the Romanian martial tradition.

Nevertheless, the field suffers from fragmented documentation, underfunding, and limited access to physical collections. Systematic cataloguing is lacking, and research remains disconnected from broader European discussions—a gap this comparative framework seeks to bridge.

The recognition of armour’s marginal historiographic status does not shift the focus of this study but rather reinforces the value of a comparative method that can draw attention to neglected artefacts. The inclusion of Romanian material—limited, often fragmentary, and historically peripheral—is not intended as a fully developed case study but as a way to test the comparative framework in a context marked by partial loss and historiographic neglect. Its function here is not illustrative but diagnostic: it reveals the challenges of tracing cultural analogies in marginal settings, where absence itself becomes part of the analytical narrative.

The aim is not to reframe armour as a primary art-historical category but to demonstrate how formal, symbolic, and technological analogies—once traced—can support its inclusion within wider cultural narratives.

Yet tracing such analogies—especially in contexts marked by loss or marginality—requires more than comparative interpretation: it demands modes of inquiry grounded in physical practice and material engagement.

4.5. Embodied Knowledge and the Logic of Proportion

Applied research and experimental reconstruction offer promising avenues for reinvigorating the study of arms and armour. As demonstrated by Tobias Capwell in his reconstruction of the Black Prince’s armour, historical reenactment grounded in craft practices connects scholarly inquiry with technical experimentation and embodied learning [78]. Such an approach does not aim to conclude debate with finality but to encourage long-term collaboration and incremental refinement.

Architecture followed a similar epistemic path: from Vitruvius, who framed architecture as an applied science (Vitruvius, De Architectura), to Alberti, who recast the architect as a humanist thinker and geometer [79]. In the martial arts, figures like Fiore dei Liberi, Hans Talhoffer, and especially Joachim Meyer elevated combat beyond utilitarian function, establishing it as a structured, symbolic discipline [27,80].

Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens (1570) exemplifies this evolution. Created in Strasbourg, a Free Imperial City and mercantile hub, the treatise reflects a Renaissance ethos of clarity, proportion, and pedagogy. Meyer’s audience included not only nobility but also guild members and educated citizens—he envisioned the fencing master as athlete, teacher, and civic model [27]. His system encompassed longsword, dusack, halberd, rapier, spear, each described with a modular, rational structure not unlike architectural articulation.

The parallels extend deeper. Alberti’s definition of architectural proportion—rooted in human anatomy—finds resonance in Meyer’s emphasis on calibrated motion, angles, and balance [79,81]. Just as Vitruvian ideals underpinned façade composition, Meyer developed principles for guard positions, attack vectors, and transitions, all aligned with bodily mechanics.

Renaissance design itself often pursued intellectual clarity through proportion and structure—a logic mirrored in Meyer’s fencing, which is not merely kinetic, but diagrammatic, that is, a living geometry in the sense of a geometry embodied in motion and proportion.

4.6. The Scabbard as Façade: Ornament, Architecture, and Symbolic Power

The sword scabbard offers one of the most architecturally charged analogies within knightly equipment. More than a passive sheath, it functioned as a mobile façade—a wearable structure that encoded ornament, hierarchy, and symbolic identity. Gothic examples, such as the effigies of Sir John de Northwode or the knight at Lingfield, frame the scabbard with architectural motifs—ogee arches, niches, trilobes—that echo church portals [55].

Renaissance scabbards, particularly from Milan and Florence, incorporated Corinthian capitals, friezes, and triglyphs, borrowing directly from classical architectural language, as codified in treatises by Alberti and Serlio [17,79,82], and echoed in the civic monumentalism of the period [58]. These miniaturized façades translated civic and noble ideology into ornamented steel.

Beyond Europe, Ottoman, Persian, and Indian scabbards became richly symbolic objects—embroidered, inlaid, and calligraphic—mirroring palace architecture with domes, polychrome tiles, and vegetal arabesques [75].

These motifs were not ornamental excess but strategies of visual power. Ceremonial scabbards from the courts of François I featured engraved scenes echoing the registers of Renaissance palaces such as Chambord, or the double-helix stair at Fontainebleau. Both architecture and weaponry conveyed princely ideology—Herculean hilts and coats of arms aligning blade and palace into a coherent symbolic grammar [83].

In modernity, the visual logic persists: scabbards and swords continued to signify rank throughout the 19th century, parallelling neo-Gothic and neoclassical civic buildings. Even in the 21st century, ceremonial blades endure, appearing in parades, guards of honour, and state rituals. Architecture and weaponry still encode hierarchy, status, and institutional identity.

4.7. Armour as Architecture in Motion

The most compelling architectural parallel, however, remains the full suit of armour. Gothic and Maximilian armours exhibit an architectural logic: the globular torso mirrors domed vaults; fluting echoes buttresses; and overlapping lames resemble ribbing systems in vaults [84].

Gauntlets, bassinet helmets, and spaulders mimic architectural components: mouldings, corbels, and engaged columns. The wasp-waisted silhouette is structurally efficient, just as flying buttresses are. Ornament—through gilding, engraving, and acid etching—functions like façade articulation: expressive, symbolic, and layered.

Importantly, many armours were asymmetrical by design. The right shoulder often differed from the left, depending on handedness, sword use, or shield positioning. These irregularities are not imperfections—they are signs of crafted humanism. Much like a slightly misaligned Gothic portal, their charm lies in individuality.

In contrast, modern industrial design prioritizes symmetry and repeatability. Yet human bodies are not symmetrical, and the pre-modern craftsman knew this. Armour expressed this organic tension; modernity often suppresses it.

4.8. Postscript: Absence as Argument—The Romanian Case

This section functions as a methodological test rather than a full case study. The Romanian principalities, long a frontier between Western, Byzantine, and later Ottoman spheres, have suffered massive loss—not only of armour, but also of fortifications, churches, and even settlements—making comparative analysis essential for recovering meaning from fragmentary evidence.

Unlike Central and Western Europe, where guilds, treatises, and preserved artefacts ensured continuity in architectural and armorial traditions, the medieval Carpathian space was shaped by fragmentation and erasure. Urban frameworks in Wallachia and Moldavia initially mirrored Central European models—regulated street grids, multifunctional cores, and craftsmanship zones [85]—but were later diluted by Ottoman administrative and stylistic overlays [86].

In rural areas, proportion emerged from embodied labour: communal systems such as the obște generated narrow, inherited land plots aligned with topography, functionally akin to architectural bays [87,88]. Yet, cultural loss remained pervasive. A recent example is the 2022 rediscovery of a hidden library in Mediaș, containing 9th–16th century manuscripts in Latin, German, and Hungarian that were concealed during WWII and long thought destroyed [89]. Comparable dynamics are evident elsewhere in Central–Eastern Europe: as Janowski has shown for Western Pomerania, even well-documented medieval helmets disappeared from scholarship after 1945, their traces broken by war, evacuation, and shifting borders [90].

Such episodes highlight a central challenge: in regions marked by rupture, analysis must often proceed through absence. While direct sources may be scarce, formal and symbolic analogies still offer interpretive access. The Romanian case thus affirms—not undermines—the relevance of a comparative framework grounded in material form and cultural resonance.

If such historical ruptures illustrate the challenges of interpreting cultural meaning through loss, recovery may equally emerge from physical gesture. Not all recoveries begin in archives; some start with a chisel and a plank. The case of șindrilă horjită, or V-grooved interlocking wooden shingle, illustrates this.

Used historically in the Arad–Bihor–Sălaj region, the last documented installations occurred in the 1980s. By 2016, the craft had nearly vanished. Within the Ambulance for Monuments initiative, related traditions—such as șiță and draniță from Maramureș and Moldavia—were compared experimentally. The groove joint was reconstructed through trial, drawing, and collaborative practice. The result was not just a functional roof but a revival of an epistemic gesture: knowledge recovered through material analogy and shared gesture [91].

The practical engagements and comparative readings discussed above converge toward a broader interpretive synthesis. In what follows, we outline the core findings and methodological implications of the study, emphasizing the relevance of a cross-disciplinary approach for heritage interpretation and material culture analysis.

5. Conclusions

This study indicates the presence of deep structural and symbolic parallels between architecture and the art of armour, particularly during the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance periods. By analysing elements such as form, proportion, ornament, and function, it shows that both disciplines emerged from a shared cultural logic: one concerned with protection, representation, and identity.

Beyond analogy, the integration of hands-on practices—experimental reconstruction, traditional stone carving, and field-based heritage work—suggests that historical artefacts are often best understood through embodied methodologies. These approaches not only clarify form and technique but also provide continuity with pre-modern knowledge systems and craftsmanship traditions.

By repositioning historical armour as a meaningful cultural artefact—linked to architectural thinking, corporeality, and skilled labour—the article may contribute to current debates in the expanding field of heritage science. It proposes a methodological model in which reconstruction, comparative analysis, and field engagement function both as research tools and as interpretive acts of preservation.

While the visual and structural parallels between architecture and armour are diverse, this paper suggests that they can be understood as following a coherent logic, at once morphological, technological, and symbolic. Gothic rib vaults and fluted cuirasses exemplify this convergence by articulating structural forces while embodying verticality and transcendence. Similarly, Renaissance orders and engraved armours indicate a shared investment in proportion, classicism, and civic identity.

In contexts where material traces are fragmentary or erased, architecture and armour can be read as co-expressive languages of form and power. Interdisciplinary methods become particularly useful, not to speculate, but to suggest possible reconstructions of intention and reframe absence as part of the narrative. This inclusive interpretive framework allows overlooked objects to be considered not only for their material presence, but for the design logics and cultural meanings they encode—forms of knowledge embedded in proportion, structure, ornament, and embodied function.

In this light, the inclusion of underrepresented contexts—such as the Romanian case—is intended not to shift the geographical focus but to suggest the applicability of the method in settings where cultural production was historically shaped by fragmentation, dependency, or erasure. Here, absence itself may be considered part of the argument: not all parallels can be drawn from abundance.

In particular, the integration of craft-based and field-based methods—ranging from experimental reconstruction to traditional carpentry and stone carving—has served not only to document techniques but to provide embodied insight into design logic, structural articulation, and material behaviour. These approaches should not be seen as peripheral but as potentially central to understanding the cultural meaning of form.

The central argument of this study is that historical armour and architecture—whether ecclesiastical, representative, or military—can be read as co-expressive manifestations of a unified cultural logic: formal, structural, and symbolic. Pre-modern societies appear to have encoded values of protection, authority, and identity into both space and body, not through abstract signs, but through the physical modulation of mass, rhythm, and articulation. While the present analysis focuses on Central and Western European contexts from the Romanesque to the Renaissance, the coherence of this logic may indicate a broader, materially embedded pattern of cultural meaning-making. Future research will explore these parallels in greater depth through analytical drawing, typological mapping, and historically grounded reconstructions. In doing so, it aims to enrich both heritage interpretation and the pedagogical strategies used to transmit their meaning.