The bath complex is located just north of the palace across an open area. This free- standing structure is approximately thirty meters square, and three of its sides feature round exedrae which project out from the building. The east face of the bath had an ornate entrance in its center, flanked by exedrae. Inside the main square hall was a pool.
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Other areas attached to the caldarium were a garden, lounging rooms, gymnasiums, and small halls and semicircular exedrae used as lecture and reading rooms.
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The Forum consisted of a sequence of open and enclosed spaces, beginning with the vast portico-lined piazza measuring long and wide, with exedrae on two sides. The main entrance was at the south end of the piazza, through a triumphal arch at the center commemorating the Dacian Wars, decorated with friezes and statues of Dacian prisoners. The arch was flanked by tall walls built from blocks of Peperino tuff clad entirely in marble, which enclosed the Forum on three sides. The tuff walls which enclosed the piazza to the west and east featured exedrae; outside the exedrae, separated by streets, were markets of concentric shape.
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It is a massive structure on a raised platform and already shows several hallmarks of Sinan's mature style: a spacious, high- vaulted basement, slender minarets, a single-domed baldacchino flanked by three semi-domes ending in three exedrae and a broad double portico.
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The exedra achieved particular popularity in ancient Roman architecture during the Roman Empire. In the 1st century AD, Nero's architects incorporated exedrae throughout the planning of his Domus Aurea, enriching the volumes of the party rooms, a part of what made Nero's palace so breathtakingly pretentious to traditional Romans, for no one had ever seen domes and exedrae in a dwelling before. An exedra was normally a public feature: when rhetoricians and philosophers disputed in a Roman gymnasium it was in an exedra opening into the peristyle that they gathered. A basilica featured a large exedra at the far end from its entrance, where the magistrates sat, usually raised up several steps, in hearing cases.
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From the epigram, we know that the interior featured two storeys with colonnades and galleries. Based on the epigram and the substructures, Harrison also posited the existence of a pair of two-storey exedrae, composed of three niches with a pier in between, on the northern and southern sides of the ambo.
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The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building. Macmillan and Co., London, 1894. That is, it stretched the length of the eastern semidome, including the apse but excluding the exedrae (half-dome recesses in a wall). Twelve silver-covered marble columns of approximately 4.94 meters from base to capital were arranged on three sides of a rectangular ground plan around the altar.
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Conjectural reconstruction of the interior by R.M. Harrison. The exedrae are visible on the left, the ambon and altar in the lower picture. Despite its architectural prominence, very little is known of the church's history and its precise architecture. Most of the information on the church's original appearance is derived from the epigram in honour of Juliana and her family, which was inscribed in pieces in various parts of the church.
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Hallett, p. 215. Some scholars have even interpreted the plan of the Forum Augustum as phallic, "with its two semi-circular galleries or exedrae as the testicles and its long projecting forecourt as the shaft".Plan of the Forum Augustum (in yellow)Dominic Montserrat, "Reading Gender in the Roman World," in Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity, and Power in the Roman Empire (Routledge, 2000), pp. 168–170 (quotation on p.
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The design of the mosque is perfectly symmetrical, with a great central dome buttressed by four semi-domes and surrounded by a number of smaller exedrae. Mehmed Agha had a book on architecture theory written for him by Cafer Efendi. In this book he explained his methods of work and the architectural training of the period. Mehmed Agha died in 1617 at about the same time as his sultan.
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The central dome of the mosque is in diameter, carried on pendentives on granite piers and two half-domes on the Qibla axis. Towards the entrance, on two sides, there is a two-story gallery. The dome is placed at the center with two exedrae similar to a Byzantine basilica, thus the resemblance to Hagia Sophia. Above the prayer hall are five small domes carried on six marble columns.
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Persian-Roman floor mosaic detail from the palace of Shapur I at Bishapur. Now this tile work is in the National Museum of Iran The main part of the excavations took place in the royal sector, in the east of the city. A water temple, interpreted as an Anahita temple, was erected near the palace. In the center there is a cross-shaped space with eight large square exedrae decorated with 64 alcoves.
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Also underground, the massive cistern, surviving today as the Sette sale, the "seven rooms", stored much of the water used in the baths. It was capable of storing no less than 8 million liters. There were also several exedrae on the eastern and western sides of the building. After archaeological analysis performed after excavation in 1997, it is thought that at least one of these exedra served as a sort of library and a holding place for scrolls and manuscripts.
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Several buildings used by the clerics of the chapel were arranged in the shape of a latin cross: a curia in the East, offices in the North and South, and a projecting part (WestbauA porch surrounded with two stair towers, la forerunner of Westworks) and an atrium with exedrae in the West. But the center piece was the chapel, covered with a 16,54 meters wide and 31 meters high octagonal cupola.Collectif, Le grand atlas de l’architecture mondiale, Encyclopædia Universalis, 1982, , p. 1888J. Favier, Charlemagne, 1999, p.
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In Muslim architecture, the exedra becomes a mihrab and invariably retains religious associations, wherever it is seen, even on the smallest scale, as a prayer niche. Both Baroque and Neoclassical architecture used exedrae. Baroque architects, (for example, Pietro da Cortona in his Villa Pigneto), used them to enrich the play of light and shade and give rein to expressive volumes; Neoclassical architects, to articulate the rhythmic pacing of a wall elevation. The interior exedra was richly exploited by Scottish neoclassical architect Robert Adam and his followers.
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This Iskele Mosque (or Jetty mosque) already shows several hallmarks of Sinan's mature style: a spacious, high-vaulted basement, slender minarets, single-domed baldacchino, flanked by three semi-domes ending in three exedrae and a broad double portico. The construction was finished in 1548. The construction of a double portico was not a first in Ottoman architecture, but it set a trend for country mosques and mosques of viziers in particular. Rüstem Pasha and Mihrimah required them later in their three mosques in Constantinople and in the Rüstem Pasha Mosque in Tekirdağ.
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Exedra tombstone An exedra (plural: exedras or exedrae) is a semicircular architectural recess or platform, sometimes crowned by a semi-dome, and either set into a building's façade or free-standing. The original Greek sense (ἐξέδρα, a seat out of doors) was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for conversation. An exedra may also be expressed by a curved break in a colonnade, perhaps with a semicircular seat. The exedra would typically have an apsidal podium that supported the stone bench.
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The narthex lies on the west side, opposed to an antechoir.Antechoir is the part of the church in front of the Choir, often reserved for the clergy. Many effects in the building were later used in Hagia Sophia: the exedrae expand the central nave on diagonal axes, colourful columns screen the ambulatories from the nave, and light and shadow contrast deeply on the sculpture of capitals and entablature. In front of the building there is a portico (which replaced the atrium) and a court (both added during the Ottoman period), with a small garden, a fountain for the ablutions and several small shops.
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Much admired in the Renaissance, its dome collapsed in 1573 and was rebuilt with the present cloister vault. Documentary evidence indicates that the Romanesque dome of San Lorenzo was a thin hemisphere of light material over a cube of space about 23.8 meters (40 Milanese braccia) on each side. The dome was supported by four corner squinches resting on the four exedrae arches of the square space with a further eight smaller squinches between each of them to create a sixteen-sided base. It was covered on the exterior by a cylindrical or polygonal drum and timber roof.
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The incomplete forum and its temple were inaugurated, 40 years after they were first vowed, in 2 BC. In 19 AD Tiberius added two triumphal arches either side of the temple in honour of Drusus the Younger and Germanicus and their victories in Germania. With the dedication of the Forum of Trajan in 112, the number of inscriptions found in the Forum of Augustus decline, which suggests that many of its functions were transferred to the new venue, although Hadrian made some repairs. The educational and cultural use of the exedrae were recorded in the late antiquity. The last reference to the forum dates to 395.
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JuvenalJuvenal, Satires 6, 527 f. mentions the temple being standing next to the Saepta Iulia, a placement confirmed by the depiction on the Forma Urbis Romae showing a southern part comprising a semicircular apse with several exedrae, and a courtyard surrounded by porticoes on the north and southern sides, with an entrance to the East. It is difficult to gather more precise data about the original aspect of the sanctuary, as its architecture has been completely erased by later buildings and modifications to the area. The generally accepted reconstruction proposes that the whole area was a rectangle measuring about 220 x 70 metersLembke, Das Iseum Campense in Rom.
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Clipped outer faces of the trees may be pleached. Within a large wood a bosquet in another, closely related sense can be set out as a formal "room", a cabinet de verdure "closet of greenery", where cabinet/closet signifies a small intimate chamber. A larger bosquet cut into the woodland might be called a salle at Versailles, such as the Salle des Antiques where twin stone-edged rills punctuated by marble copies of Roman sculptures defined an "island" of parterre, surrounded by a gravel walk, with exedrae cut into the surrounding green walls (ref. "Salle des Antiques") cut into the formal woodland, a major ingredient of André Le Nôtre's Versailles.
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An exedra adopted by Leo von Klenze for a neoclassical interior space, at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Russia Following precedents from Rome, exedrae continued to be in widespread use architecturally after the fall of Rome. In Byzantine architecture and Romanesque architecture, this familiar feature developed into the apse and is fully treated there. The term exedra is still often used for secondary apses or niches in the more complicated plans of later Byzantine churches; another term is conch, named for the scallop shell form often taken by the half-dome cap. A famous use of the exedra is in Donato Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere extension of the Vatican Palace; that exedra was initially open to the sky.
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Niche with a sculpture by Antoine Coysevox, in the Les Invalides (Paris) A niche (CanE, or ) in Classical architecture is an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. Nero's Domus Aurea (AD 64–69) was the first semi-private dwelling that possessed rooms that were given richly varied floor plans, shaped with niches and exedrae; sheathed in dazzling polished white marble, such curved surfaces concentrated or dispersed the daylight. The word derives from the Latin nidus or nest, via the French niche. The Italian nicchio for a sea-shell may also be involved,OED, "Niche" as the traditional decoration for the top of a niche is a scallop shell, as in the illustration, hence also the alternative term of "conch" for a semi-dome, usually reserved for larger exedra.
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The so-called "Colonnacce": remains of the peristyle which defined the Forum of Nerva Domitian decided to unify the previous complex and the free remaining irregular area, between the Temple of Peace and the Fora of Caesar and Augustus, and build another monumental forum which connected all of the other fora. The limited space, partially occupied by one of the exedrae of the Forum of Augustus and by the via dell'Argileto, obliged Domitian to build the lateral porticos as simply decorations of the bounding walls of the forum. The temple, dedicated to Minerva as protector of the emperor, was built leaning on the exedra of the Forum of Augustus, so that the remaining space became a large monumental entrance (Porticus Absidatus) for all the fora. Because of the death of Domitian, the forum was inaugurated by his successor, Nerva, who gave his own name to it.
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285–289 Spreading rapidly, roof tiles were within fifty years in evidence for a large number of sites around the Eastern Mediterranean, including Mainland Greece, Western Asia Minor, Southern and Central Italy. Being more expensive and labour-intensive to produce than thatch, their introduction has been explained by the fact that their fireproof quality would have given desired protection to the costly temples. As a side-effect, it has been assumed that the new stone and tile construction also ushered in the end of overhanging eaves in Greek architecture, as they made the need for an extended roof as rain protection for the mudbrick walls obsolete. Vaults and arches were not generally used, but begin to appear in tombs (in a "beehive" or cantilevered form such as used in Mycenaea) and occasionally, as an external feature, exedrae of voussoired construction from the 5th century BC. The dome and vault never became significant structural features, as they were to become in ancient Roman architecture.
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In front of the atrium was a round courtyard that opened onto the Cardo. Due to the sparse archaeological evidence and the obscurity of Procopius’ description, this plan is difficult to reconstruct. Despite the obscurity of literary details, Tsafrir has proposed that west of the atrium, there were monumental gates that opened into an area that contained a gatehouse and an arch. Beyond this, Tsafrir has hypothesized two semicircles: one would have connected the church complex to the Cardo, while the other was located across the street and provided access to the hospital and hospice.Y. Tsafrir, “Procopius and the Nea Church in Jerusalem.” Antiquité Tardive 8 (2000), 149-164. Tsafrir tentatively proposes this reconstruction, making sure to note that “the complex of the propylaea, the arch, the exedrae on the western side of the atrium, and the arrangement of the hospice and hospital are still unclear” (163). In the interior of the church, the nave terminated at a large apse that was flanked by two symmetrical smaller rooms with apses inscribed in their eastern walls.
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