Colonnade

In <a href="/facts/Classical_architecture/wKTDW6sm">classical architecture</a>, a colonnade is a long sequence of <a href="/facts/Column/NDtghP75">columns</a> joined by their <a href="/facts/Entablature/c4o7eDhy">entablature</a>, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curved. The space enclosed may be covered or open. In <a href="/facts/St._Peter%2527s_Square/7FKGbQVq">St. Peter's Square</a> in Rome, <a href="/facts/Gian_Lorenzo_Bernini/wv3RwTG1">Bernini's</a> great colonnade encloses a vast open elliptical space.
When in front of a building, screening the door (Latin porta), it is called a <a href="/facts/Portico/9yF8G3F6">portico</a>. When enclosing an open court, a <a href="/facts/Peristyle/MaruSN31">peristyle</a>. A portico may be more than one rank of columns deep, as at the <a href="/facts/Pantheon%2c_Rome/3dfWzItW">Pantheon</a> in Rome or the <a href="/facts/Stoa/HAgVmYzG">stoae</a> of <a href="/facts/Ancient_Greece/PTVBrWXq">Ancient Greece</a>. 
When the <a href="/facts/Intercolumniation/Nwlyo2Xb">intercolumniation</a> is alternately wide and narrow, a colonnade may be termed "araeosystyle" (Gr. αραιος, "widely spaced", and συστυλος, "with columns set close together"), as in the case of the western porch of <a href="/facts/St_Paul%2527s_Cathedral/e51m9gYD">St Paul's Cathedral</a> and the <a href="/facts/East_front_of_the_Louvre/1oqPm3xT">east front of the Louvre</a>.

Colonnade open-in-new

Colonnade