Porticus

Quick meaning: Porticus is a noun meaning An ancient Roman colonnade, arcade, or portico.

Meaning

An ancient Roman colonnade, arcade, or portico.

More Meanings

1. A small room in a church, commonly forming extensions to the north and south sides of it, giving the building a cruciform plan, which may function as a chapel, rudimentary transept or burial place.

Example Sentences

Only the nave survives but it is not difficult to imagine the apse at the east end, and the small porticuses to the north and south.

Most early masonry churches were of a simple plan consisting of a nave, and sometimes a chancel, porticuses (in a cellular plan church) or transepts (in an integrated plan church), and a tower. Porticuses (porticūs: sing porticus) were lateral chambers.

It remains therefore to speculate on the form of the church: whether we located north and south aisles beyond the nave or whether these are porticuses is not clear. The church could have been fully aisled, or it might have had shorter aisles extending to the east end, or just flanking porticuses.

This [the Forum of Trajan] was a large square with porticuses on three sides, and the Basilica, called Ulpia, from Trajan’s family name, on the N. side. […] Colonnades.—It is scarcely possible to image anything so perfectly adapted to the front of the basilica, or so well contrived to conceal the buildings on each side of the piazza, as these noble porticuses.

Word Forms

• porticuses

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include crypto, portico, cryptoporticus, parvis, anteportico, portal.

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