architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

, a semi-dome (or half-dome) is a half

dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

that covers a semi-circular area in a

building A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and func ...

Architecture

Semi-domes are a common feature of

apse In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. ...

s in

Ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–50 ...

and traditional church architecture, and in

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

s and

iwan An iwan ( fa, ایوان , ar, إيوان , also spelled ivan) is a rectangular hall or space, usually vaulted, walled on three sides, with one end entirely open. The formal gateway to the iwan is called , a Persian term for a portal projectin ...

s in

Islamic architecture Islamic architecture comprises the architectural styles of buildings associated with Islam. It encompasses both secular and religious styles from the early history of Islam to the present day. The Islamic world encompasses a wide geographic ...

. A semi-dome, or the whole apse, may also be called a conch after the

scallop Scallop () is a common name that encompasses various species of marine bivalve mollusks in the taxonomic family Pectinidae, the scallops. However, the common name "scallop" is also sometimes applied to species in other closely related families ...

shell often carved as decoration of the semi-dome (all shells were

conch Conch () is a common name of a number of different medium-to-large-sized sea snails. Conch shells typically have a high spire and a noticeable siphonal canal (in other words, the shell comes to a noticeable point at both ends). In North Am ...

es in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

), though this is usually used for subsidiary semi-domes, rather than the one over the main apse. Small semi-domes have been often decorated in a shell shape from ancient times, as in Piero della Francesca's ''Throned Madonna with saints and Federigo da Montefeltro'', and the example in the gallery below. Islamic examples may use

muqarnas Muqarnas ( ar, مقرنص; fa, مقرنس), also known in Iranian architecture as Ahoopāy ( fa, آهوپای) and in Iberian architecture as Mocárabe, is a form of ornamented vaulting in Islamic architecture. It is the archetypal form of I ...

decorative corbelling, while in Late Antique,

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

and medieval

church architecture Church architecture refers to the architecture of buildings of churches, convents, seminaries etc. It has evolved over the two thousand years of the Christian religion, partly by innovation and partly by borrowing other architectural styles as ...

the semi-dome is the classic location for a focal

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

, or later

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plast ...

Le 24feb a 11h23 - Ste Sophie (1280x1280)

Found in many Ancient Greek exedras, the semi-dome became a common feature of the apse at the end of Ancient Roman secular

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its nam ...

s, which was adopted in Early Christian architecture as the commonest shape for churches, becoming the focal point for decoration. In buildings like

Hagia Sophia Hagia Sophia ( 'Holy Wisdom'; ; ; ), officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque ( tr, Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi), is a mosque and major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The cathedral was originally built as a Greek Ortho ...

Byzantine architecture Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire. The Byzantine era is usually dated from 330 AD, when Constantine the Great moved the Roman capital to Byzantium, which became Constantinople, until t ...

, apsidal openings or exhedras from the central nave appear in several directions, not just to the liturgical east. The

tetraconch A tetraconch, from the Greek for "four shells", is a building, usually a church or other religious building, with four apses, one in each direction, usually of equal size. The basic ground plan of the building is therefore a Greek cross. They are ...

, triconch and

cross-in-square A cross-in-square or crossed-dome plan was the dominant architectural form of middle- and late-period Byzantine churches. It featured a square centre with an internal structure shaped like a cross, topped by a dome. The first cross-in-square chu ...

are other typically Eastern Christian church plans that produce several semi-domes. When the Byzantine styles were adapted in

Ottoman architecture Ottoman architecture is the architectural style that developed under the Ottoman Empire. It first emerged in northwestern Anatolia in the late 13th century and developed from earlier Seljuk Turkish architecture, with influences from Byzantine ...

, which was even less concerned with maintaining a central axis, a multiplicity of domes and semi-domes becomes the dominating feature of both the internal space and the external appearance of the building. The buildings of Mimar Sinan and his pupil Sedefkar Mehmed Agha are the masterpieces of this style.

Mihrab Mihrab ( ar, محراب, ', pl. ') is a niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the ''qibla'', the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a ''mihrab'' appears is thus the "qibla ...

s are another common location for semi-domes. In Western Europe the external appearance of a semi-dome is less often exploited than in Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, and is often disguised as a sloping rather than curved semi-circular roof.

Cincinnati Union Terminal Cincinnati Union Terminal is an intercity train station and museum center in the Queensgate neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Commonly abbreviated as CUT, or by its Amtrak station code, CIN, the terminal is served by Amtrak's ''Cardinal'' line ...

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line w ...

features the largest semi-dome in the

Western hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the te ...

, measuring 180 feet wide and 106 feet high.Cincinnati Union Terminal Architectural Information Sheet
. Cincinnati Museum Center. Retrieved on February 8, 2010.

Gallery

File:Hagia-Sophia-Laengsschnitt.jpg, Cross-section of Hagia Sophia, as first built File:Sultan Ahmed Mosque 02.JPG, Exterior of the

Sultan Ahmed Mosque The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, also known by its official name, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque ( tr, Sultan Ahmet Camii), is an Ottoman-era historical imperial mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. A functioning mosque, it also attracts large numbers ...

Image:Blue mosque Istanbul 2007 Roof.jpg, Interior of

("Blue Mosque"),

İstanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_in ...

. The main dome is surrounded by four semi-domes, three of which are visible in this image. They in turn have smaller semi-domes hanging off them. File:Mosaics in Nea Moni of Chios.jpg, Mosaics in Nea Moni of Chios, 11th century File:Etival-Coquille.JPG, conch niche, 18th century File:Mihrabkls.jpg, Semi-domed

mihrab Mihrab ( ar, محراب, ', pl. ') is a niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the ''qibla'', the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a ''mihrab'' appears is thus the "qibla ...

niche,

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metr ...

File:Parma Duomo di Parma 008.JPG, Painted semi-dome;

Parma Cathedral Parma Cathedral ( it, Duomo di Parma; Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta) is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Parma, Emilia-Romagna ( Italy), dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Parm ...

File:Throne in the Hall of Peter the Great.jpg,

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on th ...

with semi-dome,

Winter Palace The Winter Palace ( rus, Зимний дворец, Zimnij dvorets, p=ˈzʲimnʲɪj dvɐˈrʲɛts) is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the Russian Emperor from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now ...

Notes

References

*Hachlili, Rachel. ''Ancient Jewish art and archaeology in the diaspora''. (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1: The Near and Middle East.) Leiden: Brill, 1998 (
Google Books
*Kim, Tae Won; John H. Christy & Jae C. Choe:
Semidome building as sexual signaling in the fiddler crab Uca lactea (Brachyura: Ocypodidae)
, in ''

Journal of Crustacean Biology The ''Journal of Crustacean Biology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal in the field of carcinology (crustacean research). It is published by The Crustacean Society and Oxford University Press (formerly by Brill Publishers and All ...

'', Vol. 24:4 (2004), pp. 673-679
abstract
*

David Talbot Rice David Talbot Rice (11 July 1903 in Rugby – 12 March 1972 in Cheltenham) was an English archaeologist and art historian. He has been described variously as a "gentleman academic" and an "amateur" art historian, though such remarks are not ...

, Byzantine Art, 3rd edn 1968, Penguin Books Ltd *Vadnal, Jane:
Glossary of Medieval Art and Architecture
' (

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

) {{Islamic architecture Arches and vaults Ancient Roman architectural elements Semi Islamic architecture Islamic architectural elements