Openings placed along the walls and concluded by a semicircular or polygonal wall. Niches can be distinguished from an apse, as they are small rooms. When small in size, they can serve as wardrobes or storerooms, inserted in the wall. Medium-sized niches correspond to small service compartments, ad...

The crustae marmoris are stone elements used in the incrustation technique to decorate surfaces by inserting small parts, including in different materials, metals, mother-of-pearl and ivory, to obtain a geometric design or figure. This technique, also used by the Greeks, was later called marble int...

In classical architecture, the trabeation is composed of several architectural elements superimposed horizontally with the function of joining the columns and distributing the weight of the structure above them evenly. The trabeation is composed of the architrave, which connects the capitals of the...

Administrative office, assigned to govern the city, established already in the first centuries of the Roman Kingdom, it was also maintained in the following republican and imperial phases. In that period, the praefectus urbi became increasingly important and visible, even absorbing the powers of th...

Goddess of fertility and protector of nature, Cybele, also known as “Magna Mater”, the Great Mother. Her worship has distant origins, which can be traced back to the pre-Hellenic populations of Anatolia. Her oldest sanctuary was located in Phrygia, near the city of Pessinus, where a meteorite st...

The metae were semicircular elements, usually columns, placed individually on each of the two ends of the spina in the Circus Maximus, around which the racers would turn during the race, which included seven counter-clockwise laps of the chariots....

The base is the part of classical architecture referring to the lower element of a structure, also called the basement, followed by the facing and the crowning. In the case of the column, the base is used to separate it from the floor and widen the area of support. The Attican base takes its name f...

Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus was born in 244 AD, in the Roman province of Dalmatia, into a family of humble origins. He began his military career as a young man, moving rapidly up the ranks, until he was appointed commander of the cavalry, and later general, during the period of Emperor Marc...

Fundamental element of the construction system, consisting of a single block of wood or stone, placed horizontally. Its function is to unload the weight of the brickwork above, on two lateral parts of the brickwork, creating an open area. In a similar way the architrave is placed on imposts or col...

It is a vertical architectural structure with a semicircular shape, covered by a brickwork vault, called a dome or semi-dome; in some cases the roof is made of wood with supporting beams placed like the rays of the sun. In the case of an aedicula, semi-open and/or delimited by walls, the apse is us...