Engaged column

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Engaged columns embedded in the side walls of the cella of the Maison Carrée at Nimes (right side of the image)

In architecture, an engaged column is a column embedded in a wall and partly projecting from the surface of the wall, sometimes defined as semi or three-quarter detached. Engaged columns are rarely found in classical Greek architecture, and then only in exceptional cases, but in Roman architecture they exist in profusion, most commonly embedded in the cella walls of pseudoperipteral buildings

Engaged columns are distinct from pilasters, which by definition are ornamental and not structural.

[edit] Gallery

Engaged columns embedded in the walls of The Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra in Rome	Semi-detached columns flanking a door of the Ostia Antica, in Rome	Semi-detached columns on the Villa on the Piazza dei Signori in Vicenza, Italy	Semi-detached columns on the The Trinity Church in Żórawina near Wrocław, Poland
Engaged columns on the county courthouse in Springfield, Ohio

[edit] See also

• Decastyle
• Hexastyle
• Hypostyle
• Octostyle
• Peristyle
• Portico
• Tetrastyle

[edit] References

• Stierlin, Henri The Roman Empire: From the Etruscans to the Decline of the Roman Empire, TASCHEN, 2002
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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