Practice question · Match the pairs
Match each element of a basilican church to its position.
- Nave
- Aisle
- Clerestory
- Apse
- The lower flanking space beside the nave
- The central space running the length of the building
- The windowed wall above the aisle roofs
- The semicircular termination at the focus
Hints
- The four run from the centre outward and then along the axis.
- The windows above the aisle roofs are the clerestory.
Show the answer
- Nave → The central space running the length of the building
- Aisle → The lower flanking space beside the nave
- Clerestory → The windowed wall above the aisle roofs
- Apse → The semicircular termination at the focus
Why
These four names describe most churches built in Western Europe for a thousand years, which makes them worth memorising exactly. The clerestory is the one that explains the section: the nave is taller than the aisles precisely so that it can be lit from above them.
Practise Architecture II: Reading a Building
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Art History I is free to start.
More questions on Architecture II: Reading a Building
- Why did the orders survive the culture that produced them by two thousand years?
- Which are true of the central-plan church in Renaissance debate?
- An architectural type is a recurring spatial configuration rather than a fixed set of measurements. What…
- A plan is a horizontal cut through the building, so what is drawn solid is what the cut passes through.
- Sort each feature by whether it belongs to a LONGITUDINAL or a CENTRAL plan.
- Complete the vocabulary of reading a building.
- How many orders did Renaissance theory canonise?
- Arrange these steps for describing an unfamiliar building, in the order that works.
- The orders specify only the shape of the column and its capital.