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In architecture, the capital (from Latin caput 'head') or chapiter forms the topmost member of a column (or a pilaster). It mediates between the column and the load thrusting down upon it, broadening the area of the column's supporting surface.
The Ionic anta capital, in contrast to the regular column capitals, is highly decorated and generally includes bands of alternating lotuses and flame palmettes, and bands of eggs and darts and beads and reels patterns, in order to maintain continuity with the decorative frieze lining the top of the walls. This difference with the column ...
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural ... In the case of Doric columns, the capital usually consists of a round, tapering ...
The shaft is wider at the bottom than at the top, because its entasis, beginning a third of the way up, imperceptibly makes the column slightly more slender at the top, although some Doric columns, especially early Greek ones, are visibly "flared", with straight profiles that narrow going up the shaft. The capital rests on the shaft.
In their original Greek version, Doric columns stood directly on the flat pavement (the stylobate) of a temple without a base. With a height only four to eight times their diameter, the columns were the most squat of all the classical orders; their vertical shafts were fluted with 20 parallel concave grooves, each rising to a sharp edge called an arris.
One of the three orders or organisational systems of Ancient Greek or classical architecture characterised by columns which stood on the flat pavement of a temple without a base, their vertical shafts fluted with parallel concave grooves topped by a smooth capital that flared from the column to meet a square abacus at the intersection with the ...
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Following Serlio's interpretation of Vitruvius (who gives no indication of the column's capital), in the Tuscan order the column had a simpler base—circular rather than squared as in the other orders, where Vitruvius was being followed—and with a simple torus and collar, and the column was unfluted, while both capital and entablature were ...