In the earlier
Byzantine church architecture the dome rested directly on the
pendentives and the windows were pierced in the dome itself; in later examples, between the pendentive and the dome an intervening circular wall was built in which the windows were pierced. This is the type which was universally employed by the architects of the
Renaissance, of whose works the best-known example is
St. Peter's Basilica at
Rome. Other examples of churches of this type are
St Paul's Cathedral in
London and the churches of the
Les Invalides, the
Val-de-Grâce, and the
Sorbonne in
Paris. There are also secular buildings with tholobates: the
United States Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. is set on a drum, a feature imitated in numerous American
state capitols. The
Panthéon in Paris is another secular building featuring a dome on a drum. St Paul's Cathedral and the Panthéon were the two inspirations for the U.S. Capitol. In contrast, the dome of the
Reichstag building in Berlin before its post-war restoration was a
quadrilateral, so its tholobate was square and not round. == Gallery ==