The Parts of a Greek Temple: from Crepidoma to Acroterion

A Greek temple consists of four layers. At the bottom stands the base, the crepidoma, in three steps, of which the uppermost is called the stylobate. On it stand the columns, with shaft and capital. On top lies the entablature, with the architrave at the bottom, the frieze with triglyphs and metopes in the middle and the cornice at the top. Highest of all sits the gable with its triangular field, the tympanum, and on its apex and corners the acroteria. Inside the ring of columns lies the enclosed body of the temple, the cella, where the statue of the god stood. The drawing below can be explored part by part.

Facts

Read the Temple Like a Sentence

The easiest way to learn the parts of the temple is to read it from top to bottom, as in the drawing in the basics: acroterion, tympanum, cornice, metope and triglyph, architrave, capital, shaft, stylobate and crepidoma. The drawing shows a Doric temple with six columns on the front, the most common number. The Temple of Hephaestus at the Athenian Agora has precisely six columns on the short sides and thirteen on the long sides, and it has been allowed to keep both roof and entablature because it became a church in the 7th century. For anyone who wants to see how a Doric temple was meant to look, it is a better place than the Acropolis.

The temple was built as a dwelling for a god. The congregation gathered outdoors at the altar in front, so it was the outside that was the architecture. That is why the parts are so carefully shaped on the outside, while the space inside is cramped and dark.

From the Bottom Up: Crepidoma, Stylobate and Column

The crepidoma is the stepped stone base, usually of three steps. The steps were too high to climb; they are the foot of the building, not a staircase. The uppermost step, the stylobate, is the floor on which the columns stand. On the Parthenon the stylobate is 30.88 metres wide and 69.50 metres long, and it curves slightly upwards towards the middle, by about 6 centimetres on the short sides and 11 on the long sides.

The column consists of shaft and capital, and in the Ionic and Corinthian orders also of a base. The Doric column stands directly on the stylobate without a base. The shaft has grooves, flutes, and swells slightly at the middle, known as entasis, so that it does not look sunken from a distance. The Doric capital is a rounded cushion beneath a square slab, the abacus, which receives the entablature. The capital reveals the order: cushion and slab are Doric, scrolls, volutes, are Ionic and acanthus leaves Corinthian. More about the orders in the guide to the orders of columns. The columns of the Parthenon are 10.43 metres high and 1.91 metres thick at the bottom.

The Entablature: Architrave, Frieze and Cornice

On top of the capitals lies the entablature, in three bands. The architrave is the lowest, plain beam that rests directly on the capitals and spans from column to column. Above it lies the frieze. In the Doric order the frieze is divided into triglyphs, slabs with three vertical bands, and metopes, the almost square panels between them. The triglyphs sit over each column and midway between, and are thought to imitate the ends of the roof beams in older timber temples. Beneath them hang small drops that look like pegs.

The metopes were often filled with reliefs. On the Parthenon they show, among other things, battles between gods and giants and between Lapiths and centaurs. A large part of them, like the frieze and the pediment sculptures, was taken to England in the early 19th century and is now in the British Museum. At the top of the entablature the cornice projects like a moulding that protects the façade from rain and casts a sharp band of shadow. The Ionic order instead has a continuous frieze that runs round the whole building without a break.

The Gable and the Roof

The temple has a low gabled roof, and on the short sides the roof forms a triangular gable. The gable field, the tympanum, is framed by the cornice below and the raking cornices above. It was the place for the largest sculptural groups, often the battles of the gods or the myths of the city. The whole gable end is also called the pediment, a word later used for any triangular crown over a portico, a window or a door.

On the apex and corners of the gable stood acroteria, sculptures or ornaments, often a palmette. The temples were also painted in red, blue and gold, especially the frieze, the tympanum and the acroteria. The white marble we see today is what was left when the colour weathered away.

Inside and in Proportion

Behind the ring of columns lies the body of the temple, with a porch, the pronaos, the inner cella, which the Greeks called the naos, and often a rear chamber. In the Temple of Hera at Paestum in southern Italy the inner row of columns that once supported the roof stands in two storeys, and one can see how the central aisle was constructed. In the cella of the Parthenon stood Pheidias's great statue of Athena in gold and ivory.

The parts are tied together by proportions. On the Parthenon, the height from the stylobate to the cornice, 13.72 metres, relates to the width of the stylobate as 4 to 9, and the same ratio holds between width and length and almost exactly between the diameter of the column and the distance between the columns. The drawing of the proportions of the Parthenon below shows the measurements layer by layer. The architects were Ictinus and Callicrates.

Look Out For: the Parts of a Temple in Your Own City

The same words work far beyond Greece. The Roman Maison Carrée in Nîmes has a temple front with Corinthian columns, but stands on a high podium with a staircase only at the front, instead of a crepidoma all round. The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin has Doric columns with bases and a frieze with triglyphs and metopes. Gustav III's Linneanum in Uppsala has a portico with Doric columns without bases, entirely on the Greek pattern.

Next time you see a museum, a bank or a church with a temple front: find the gable first, then the entablature, and count the columns. Are the capitals cushions, scrolls or leaves? Do the columns stand on a base or directly on the floor? Does the frieze have triglyphs? More examples can be found in the guides to Greek architecture, the Acropolis and Greek and Roman architecture, and the later vocabulary of the façade in the guide to the parts of a façade.

The parts from top to bottom

Exercise

What is the plain beam that rests directly on the capitals of the columns called?