Exporting a Culture/ Importing a Culture

The new political entities established in the East during the late tenth through twelfth centuries were heavily indebted to Byzantine culture. Christianized from Constantinople, Kievan Rus’ lacked a building tradition in permanent materials and imported both masons and brick technology from Byzantium. Serbia and Bulgaria had a strong Byzantine presence before securing their independence. While Bulgarian architecture followed closely that of Constantinople, Serbia, connected to Adriatic littoral, blended elements of the Italian Romanesque with Byzantine forms.