Roman or Romanesque? Confusion about the Putative Temple of Apollo in Maastricht

It has been difficult and confusing in the past to recognize the periods specific buildings were built in, since the tools to analyze and date architecture were not yet developed. In the Netherlands as well several buildings were dated in another period than we can do today as a result of a lack of analytical tools and firmly dated comparisons. A common factor seems to have been the wish to provide cities with age-old histories, preferable with an important Roman phase. In Maastricht a small building was described in the early eighteenth century as a former Temple of Apollo, a description that led to a more detailed one by Van Heylerhoff in the nineteenth century, in an attempt to reconstruct in words what had been lost already long ago. Several drawings were also produced in the nineteenth century to visualize the presumed temple, apparently based on the detailed description by Van Heylerhoff. Once in the twentieth century it was established that the supposed Temple of Apollo must have been a medieval chapel instead of a roman structure, it has become obvious that here another example occurred of the apparently difficult distinction between Roman architecture and what is now commonly labelled as Romanesque.