In ancient

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and

Roman architecture Ancient Roman architecture adopted the external language of classical ancient Greek architecture for the purposes of the ancient Romans, but was different from Greek buildings, becoming a new architectural style. The two styles are often con ...

, a peristyle (; ) is a continuous porch formed by a row of columns surrounding the perimeter of a building or a courtyard. ''Tetrastoön'' () is a rarely used archaic term for this feature. The peristyle in a Greek temple is a '' peristasis'' (). In the Christian

ecclesiastical architecture Church architecture refers to the architecture of Christian buildings, such as Church (building), churches, chapels, convents, and seminaries. It has evolved over the two thousand years of the Christian religion, partly by innovation and partly ...

that developed from the Roman

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica (Greek Basiliké) was a large public building with multiple functions that was typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek Eas ...

, a courtyard peristyle and its garden came to be known as a

cloister A cloister (from Latin , "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open Arcade (architecture), arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle (architecture), quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cat ...

Etymology

The Greek word περίστυλον ''perístylon'' is composed of περί ''peri'', "around" or "surrounded", and στῦλος ''stylos'', "column" or "pillar", together meaning "surrounded by columns/pillars". It was Latinised into synonyms ''peristylum'' and ''peristylium''.

In Greek architecture

A peristyle was mostly used as a courtyard in Ancient Greece, but in the homes of people who were in the upper class or if they owned slaves usually, it was also used as gardens surrounding. The peristyle use was a common area, a place in the house were both men and Woman could meet. Sometimes, it also included an altar for sacrifices. Large parties, ones that were too large for the Estates

Symposium In Ancient Greece, the symposium (, ''sympósion'', from συμπίνειν, ''sympínein'', 'to drink together') was the part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, o ...

room, were mainly in the peristyle.

In Roman architecture

In rural settings, a wealthy Roman could surround a

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the f ...

with terraced gardens but often included a peristyle with the design; in a ''

domus In ancient Rome, the ''domus'' (: ''domūs'', genitive: ''domūs'' or ''domī'') was the type of town house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras. It was found in almost all the ma ...

'' in the city, Romans often used peristyle to create a garden or open space within the house. The columns or square pillars surrounding the garden supported a shady roofed

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cu ...

whose inner walls were often embellished with elaborate wall paintings of landscapes and ''

trompe-l'œil ; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...

'' architecture. Sometimes the ''

lararium Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ) were Tutelary deity#Ancient Rome, guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an ama ...

'', a shrine for the

Lares Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ) were Tutelary deity#Ancient Rome, guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an ama ...

, the gods of the household, was located in this portico, or it might be found in the atrium. The courtyard might contain flowers and shrubs, fountains, benches, sculptures and even fish ponds. Romans devoted as large a space to the peristyle as site constraints permitted. In the grandest development of the urban peristyle house, as it evolved in

Roman North Africa Africa was a Roman province on the northern coast of the continent of Africa. It was established in 146 BC, following the Roman Republic's conquest of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisi ...

, often one part of the portico was eliminated for a larger open space. The end of the Roman ''domus'' is one mark of the extinction of

late antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

. Simon P. Ellis wrote in the ''American Journal of Archaeology'' that it represented "the disappearance of the Roman peristyle house marks the end of the ancient world and its way of life." "No new peristyle houses were built after A.D. 550." Noting that as houses and villas were increasingly abandoned in the fifth century, a few palatial structures were expanded and enriched, as power and classical culture became concentrated in a narrowing class, and public life withdrew to the

, or audience chamber, of the magnate. In the

Eastern Roman empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

, late antiquity lingered longer: Ellis identified the latest-known peristyle house built from scratch as the Villa of the Falconer at

Argos, Peloponnese Argos (; ; ) is a city and former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese (region), Peloponnese, Greece and is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and the oldest in Europe. ...

, dating from the style of its floor

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 (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

s to about 530–550. Existing houses in many cases were subdivided to accommodate a larger and less elite population in a warren of small spaces, and columned porticoes were enclosed in small cubicles, as at the House of Hesychius at Cyrene.Noted by Ellis p. 567.

Other uses

Although

ancient Egyptian architecture Spanning over three thousand years, ancient Egypt was not one stable civilization but in constant change and upheaval, commonly History of ancient Egypt, split into periods by historians. Likewise, ancient Egyptian architecture is not one style, ...

predates Greek and Roman architecture, historians frequently use the Greek term ''peristyle'' to describe similar, earlier structures in

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

ian palace architecture and in

Levant The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use toda ...

ine houses known as liwan houses.

Notes

External links