Porch architecture
Introduction
A portico is a covered architectural space, made up of a gallery of columns "Column (architecture)") attached to a building. A porch is a "gallery"
of arches or columns around a patio or plaza, or in front of a building.
The concept of a portico and its variants
The stoa (Greek word translatable as "portico") was a construction typical of Greek urbanism, common in agoras, and which basically consisted of a colonnade that supported an elongated covered space. The monumental entrances to the sacred precincts, which were also porticoed, were called propylaea.
Pronaos was the porch located in front of the sacred chamber or cella "Cella (architecture)") of Greek or Roman temples. It is famous that it gives way to the Pantheon of Rome, which in fact is much earlier than the interior space, covered with the great dome of Hadrian, and continues to carry on the frieze the epigraphy that attributes its construction to Agrippa. The typical Roman temple (such as the Maison Carrée in Nîmes) had the pronaos delimited with only the columns "Column (architecture)"), without closing side walls (which do exist in some temples in antis") -antae, the columns or pillars that flank the entrance-[3] Greek, a typology derived from the Mycenaean megaron). The meaning of the Greek word pronaos is "before the temple». In Latin, the pronaos was also called anticum or prodomus.
In medieval architecture, structures called "porticos" (in old French porche, from Latin porticus, the Spanish word "porch" would come from the Catalan porxe)[4] were made in front of the "Portada (architecture)" portals of some cathedrals, such as the portico of Glory of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (Maestro Mateo, -Romanesque- century), but with a different formal conception.[5] The Renaissance rescued the old Greco-Roman concept and applied it to different types of buildings, such as the Palladian villas, widely spread in Anglo-Saxon architecture -The Vyne (1654, by John Webb")—, was the first example, later widely imitated both in England - (1826), by John Nash "John Nash (architect)"), and in the United States -east portico of the Capitol and many other legislative buildings—although the first design of a classical portico for such a purpose was at the in Paris. In the Baroque, porticoes were used with very different criteria ( by Bernini in St. Peter's Square in Rome (1657), by Claude Perrault in the Louvre in Paris (1667), west façade of St. Paul's Cathedral in London (1657), by Christopher Wren,[6] by Fischer von Erlach in Vienna (1714). Neoclassical architecture repeatedly used the Greco-Roman models ( (1815) in Munich, by Leo von Klenze).