<P> Renaissance trends from Italy and Central Europe influenced Russia in many ways . Their influence was rather limited, however, due to the large distances between Russia and the main European cultural centers and the strong adherence of Russians to their Orthodox traditions and Byzantine legacy . </P> <P> Prince Ivan III introduced Renaissance architecture to Russia by inviting a number of architects from Italy, who brought new construction techniques and some Renaissance style elements with them, while in general following the traditional designs of Russian architecture . In 1475 the Bolognese architect Aristotele Fioravanti came to rebuild the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, which had been damaged in an earthquake . Fioravanti was given the 12th - century Vladimir Cathedral as a model, and he produced a design combining traditional Russian style with a Renaissance sense of spaciousness, proportion and symmetry . </P> <P> In 1485 Ivan III commissioned the building of the royal residence, Terem Palace, within the Kremlin, with Aloisio da Milano as the architect of the first three floors . He and other Italian architects also contributed to the construction of the Kremlin walls and towers . The small banquet hall of the Russian Tsars, called the Palace of Facets because of its facetted upper story, is the work of two Italians, Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario, and shows a more Italian style . In 1505, an Italian known in Russia as Aleviz Novyi or Aleviz Fryazin arrived in Moscow . He may have been the Venetian sculptor, Alevisio Lamberti da Montagne . He built 12 churches for Ivan III, including the Cathedral of the Archangel, a building remarkable for the successful blending of Russian tradition, Orthodox requirements and Renaissance style . It is believed that the Cathedral of the Metropolitan Peter in Vysokopetrovsky Monastery, another work of Aleviz Novyi, later served as an inspiration for the so - called octagon - on - tetragon architectural form in the Moscow Baroque of the late 17th century . </P> <P> Between the early 16th and the late 17th centuries, an original tradition of stone tented roof architecture developed in Russia . It was quite unique and different from the contemporary Renaissance architecture elsewhere in Europe, though some research terms the style' Russian Gothic' and compares it with the European Gothic architecture of the earlier period . The Italians, with their advanced technology, may have influenced the invention of the stone tented roof (the wooden tents were known in Russia and Europe long before). According to one hypothesis, an Italian architect called Petrok Maly may have been an author of the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoye, one of the earliest and most prominent tented roof churches . </P>

What culture served as the inspiration for the renaissance