For other uses, see Portico (disambiguation).
A portico is a porch that is leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea first appeared in Ancient Greece and has influenced many cultures, including most Western cultures. Some famous examples of porticos are the East Portico of the United States Capitol, and the portico adorning the Pantheon in Rome. Bologna, Italy, is very famous for its porticos. In total, there are over 45 kilometres of arcades, some 38 in the city center. The longest portico in the world, about 3.5 km, leads from the edge of the city up to Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca. Palladio was a pioneer of using temple-fronts for secular buildings. In the UK, the temple-front applied to The Vyne, Hampshire was the first portico applied to an English country house. A pronaos is the inner area of the portico of a Greek or Roman temple, situated between the portico's colonnade or walls and the entrance to the cella, or shrine. Roman temples commonly had an open pronaos, usually with only columns and no walls, and the pronaos could be as long as the cella. The word pronaos is Greek for "before a temple". In Latin, a pronaos is also referred to as an anticum or prodomus.
[edit] Types of porticoThe different variants of porticos are named by the number of columns they have. [edit] TetrastyleThe tetrastyle has four columns; it was commonly employed by the Greeks and the Etruscans for small structures such as public buildings and amphiprostyles. The Romans favoured the four columned portico for their pseudoperipteral temples like the Temple of Portunus, and for amphiprostyle temples such as the Temple of Venus and Roma, and for the prostyle entrance porticos of large public buildings like the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine. The White House' North Portico is perhaps the most famous four-columned portico in the United States. [edit] HexastyleHexastyle buildings had six columns and were the standard facade in canonical Greek Doric architecture between the archaic period 600–550 B.C up to the Age of Pericles 450–430 B.C. [edit] Greek hexastyle
The hexastyle Temple of Concord at Agrigentum (c. 430 B.C)
Some well-known examples of classical Doric hexastyle Greek temples:
Hexastyle was also applied to Ionic temples, such as the prostyle porch of the sanctuary of Athena on the Erechtheum, at the Acropolis of Athens. [edit] Roman hexastyleWith the colonization by the Greeks of Southern Italy, hexastyle was adopted by the Etruscans and subsequently acquired by the ancient Romans. Roman taste favoured narrow pseudoperipteral and amphiprostyle buildings with tall columns, raised on podiums for the added pomp and grandeur conferred by considerable height. The Maison Carrée at Nîmes, France, is the best-preserved Roman hexastyle temple surviving from antiquity. [edit] OctostyleOctostyle buildings had eight columns; they were considerably rarer than the hexastyle ones in the classical Greek architectural canon. The best-known octostyle buildings surviving from Antiquity are the Parthenon in Athens, built during the Age of Pericles (450–430 B.C), and the Pantheon in Rome (125 A.D). The destroyed Temple of Divus Augustus in Rome, the centre of the Augustan cult, is shown on Roman coins of the 2nd century AD as having been built in octostyle. [edit] DecastyleThe decastyle has ten columns; as in the temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus, and the portico of University College London. [edit] See also
Portico close to piazza Santo Stefano Bologna
[edit] References
Directorio de Enlaces Directorio dmoz Directorio espejo dmoz Pedro Bernardo |