The article discusses a special type of western European Romanesque architecture, the church with the presbytery (choir) under the bell tower (germ. “Chorturm”, fr. “tour chevet”), the base of which is the altar space. Most of all are common in areas on the border of present-day states of Slovenia (the area of Koroško) and Austria (region Carinthia), and in south and West Germany (Thuringia, Alsace) and Scandinavia. It is a special architectural type that occurs mostly in small rural churches, and is a separate regional group. However, the space under this bell tower can be compared with crossing of the nave and the transept in early Christian basilicas and dome churches in Byzantium and in the West. It shows a genetic relation, which returns to the idea of a common root Romanesque and byzantine architecture.