Let’s talk columns. I love columns, which sounds weird, but I do. Columns are, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful ways to hold something up. You see it used in figurative language as well: “the pale column of her neck” is a perfect example of how columns are both aesthetically pleasing and damn efficient at what they do. How noble a cause but to carry aloft a skull containing that which all of human evolution has worked to achieve.
Flowery language aside, columns have been a cornerstone of architecture for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians stacked drums of bound papyrus reeds on top of each other to hold up their roofs. They eventually turned to using stone instead and filled massive halls with inscribed columns such as in the temples of Karnak.
The ancient Greeks used columns in everything from mundane government buildings to palaces to temples, and used anything from local stone to specific types of marble only found in a few places.
The ancient Romans did the same, and carried on the tradition of using columns as an aesthetic choice as well as a structural element as seen on the outside of the Colosseum.
Columns also come with their own lingo, too. A specific type of column is called an order. A line of columns is a colonnade. Four lines of columns forming a rectangle are called a peristyle. The platform on which many temples are built is called a stylobate and the peristyle sits right on the edge of the stylobate. The bottom of the column is the base and the top is the capital. The grooves in the column are called flutes. The often highly decorated part of the roof right above the column is called the entablature. Probably the coolest column-related term is entasis which describes the way columns swell in the middle to give the impression of a tall and straight column from afar. Columns without this swelling look like they get narrower in the middle because the eye makes them look larger at the top and bottom where they meet the building. Cool, right?
Columns have been such an integral part of specifically European architecture that the ancient civilizations who birthed them came up with specific types of columns to fit their different needs. In the massive hypostyle hall of the temples of Karnak, the columns are present just as much to hold up the ceiling as they are to tell a story, so they are tall, they are wide, and they are absolutely covered in hieroglyphics.
In classical Greek and Roman architecture, columns are thin and fluted, used to hold the ceiling up and break up a buildings facade, making it simply feel better to look at. No one wants to look at a flat box, and these ancient civilizations embraced that.
In specifically Greek and Roman architecture, columns can be identified as one of three canonical orders. There are two what I call “suborders” of columns, but they were a later addition and used exclusively by the Romans. However, there is fourth kind of column is still being debated by historians because the only remaining examples are actually reconstructions.
Let’s tackle this fourth one first. It’s called the Minoan column because it was first discovered in the palace of Knossos on Crete (and yes, Minoan stuff is named after the mythical King Minos with the minotaur). These columns are red and tapered so that their widest point is actually at the top, said to have been constructed of the trunks of cypress trees inverted to prevent the trees from taking root in the building itself.
However, by the time anyone started to really buckle down and catalogue all the different types of columns, Sir Arthur Evans, the guy who rediscovered Knossos in 1900, had created these reconstructions based on what he found, supposedly replacing and “repairing” the ruins. No original Minoan columns exist, and some scholars are convinced they never existed at all, and were simply fabricated by Evans either because he thought it would look cool or simply lacked any evidence contrary to what he thought the columns actually looked like.
That was your crash-course into the controversy surrounding specifically the columns of the palace at Knossos. There was much drama surrounding Knossos since Heinrich Schliemann was also discovering Tiryns and Mycenae around the same time. Minoan columns definitely exist now, so labelling any “red-painted tapered columns” as Minoan columns is okay in my book, at least as long as the columns are on the island of Crete.
The three Greek and two Roman column orders are definitely real, though. Don’t worry.
The three types of Greek orders are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, and the two types of Roman orders are Tuscan and Composite. To give a simple timeline, Doric is the oldest type of column, found in Aegean and early Greek architecture, while Ionic came later during the Classic periods. Corinthian columns are the next most recent and were mostly for ornamental purposes as opposed to being structural components. Tuscan and Composite columns are Roman-era subsets of Doric and Corinthian orders, respectively and share most of the characteristics of their predecessors
In terms of appearance, though, to the untrained eye, they look identical, and for the most part, they are. They start at the bottom as a pillar, they extend up as a pillar, and they meet the ceiling as a pillar. Standard column behavior, right?
This is where things get interesting, though. Doric columns do not have a base. while Ionic and Corinthian columns do. This means that the very bottom of a Doric column sits directly on the floor. Ionic columns and Corinthian columns have at least one, maybe two disks of bases in larger diameters to give a little visual variation.
What’s more interesting is that Doric columns have very little capital at the very top of the column where it meets the ceiling. Ionic columns have volutes, or little scrolled knobs at the top, and Corinthian columns have massive organic ornamentation in the form of acanthus leaves. Doric columns are by far the most understated type of column.
For most columns, and especially Ancient Greek columns, the type of column used is paired with ornamentation along the outside edge of the roof. Where modern houses have eaves and gutters, ancient Greek temples had what are called entablatures and the entablature was the space just above the column capital and just below the roof.
A temple’s entablature can tell you whether the temple is Doric or Ionic. Doric temples have triglyphs, which are little blocks of stone inscribed with three vertical lines, and metopes, which are little squares of stone carved into a scene like a picture. If you look at a temple and see squares spaced out by little blocks with three vertical lines, you’re looking at a Doric temple.
Ionic temples have a continuous frieze in their entablature. A frieze is a carved scene, usually depicting some pivotal event relevant to the subject it’s attached to. If you look at a temple and see one long scene wrapping around the temple above the columns, you’re looking at an ionic temple.
The Corinthian order essentially built upon the decorative nature of the Ionic order by pairing the classic Ionic continuous frieze with the acanthus leaves on the capitals. The end result makes buildings of the Corinthian order massively decorated and almost delicate to look at.
Tuscan columns look like super plain Doric columns, spectacularly containing even less decoration than the original. I know–that doesn’t seem possible, and yet somehow, the Tuscan order manages to be the single most plain looking architectural feature in the human history.
The Composite suborder is what happens when you try to combine the Ionic and Corinthian orders. It has both the volutes or scrolls of an Ionic capital and the leaves of a Corinthian capital, and a massively decorated frieze.
To review, the main differences between ancient columns are:
- Doric has no base and very little capital.
- Ionic has a base and scrolls as capitals.
- Corinthian has a base and highly decorated capitals with acanthus leaves.
- Doric has triglyphs and metopes, while Ionic and Corinthian have a frieze.
- Tuscan is like a super boring Doric.
- Composite is a mixed order.
- Minoan is on thin ice but I’ll allow it.
“But how will knowing this info help me sound cool?”
Uh, wouldn’t you be wowed if you showed someone an ancient temple and they said “oh, yeah, that’s a doric temple which means it’s either really late Aegean or early to mid Greek, and I know this because the columns have no base/ the columns have no capital/ triglyphs and metopes are present”?
No? Try this tidbit of info on for size, then. The famous Athenian temple, the Parthenon, is both Doric and Ionic. How is this possible? It has two peristyles. That’s right. One inside the other. The outer peristyle is Doric, as evidenced by the lack of bases and capitals, and the presence of metopes and triglyphs. The inner peristyle is Ionic as evidenced by the minimal but present bases and scrolled capitals, and the long continuous frieze wrapping around the interior portion of the temple.
Now, when someone walks up to you on the street, thrusts a photo of an ancient Greek temple into your hands, and demands you identify what kind of temple it is and give a ballpark timeframe for when it was built, you are equipped with the knowledge to answer “please stop bothering me and go away, I’m trying to walk to work and I will call the cops”