The outside most frequent are:

• Scanning the external walls with blind arches and pilasters: This highly distinctive element was a long development in different regions of Europe, the Meuse to Burgundy and Lombardy to Catalonia
• Building shell plastically often treated as inside; frequent decorative motif is the use of niches and pilasters and cornices, etc..;
• Articulated facade with a narthex, a porch, a prostyle, or a portal plastically defined, sometimes there is a rose window;
• Presence of a tower at the transept with the nave (in France);
• Integration with sculptural elements of various kinds in the form of bassolilievi, portals, stilofori items, the lunettes, metopes, etc.;
• With two towers side by side to side (not always symmetric) derived from Westwerk (in areas of Germanic influence in Normandy);
• Presence of a tower block (in Italy) or attached to the apses (in Spain).
• Bands dichromate in Pisan Romanesque and its derivations;
• Presence of marble inlays in the Tuscan Romanesque in Florence.

The extreme flexibility with which the Roman builders freely interpreted models of buildings allowed the insertion of disparate reasons, including Islamic and Byzantine elements (think for example the architecture of the Venetian or Sicilian).