What is a pronaos?
The pronaos is the roofed front porch of a classical temple: the space in front of the door of the naos, bounded by the front row of columns and by the projecting side walls of the cella. The Greek word means literally before the naos.
The pronaos is therefore not a room in its own right but a transitional space: from the open exterior and the surrounding colonnade to the enclosed inner chamber, accessible only to priests, in which the cult statue stood.
The parts of a classical temple
From front to back, the core of a Greek temple consists of:
- Pronaos — the front porch
- Naos (Latin: cella) — the main room housing the statue of the god
- Opisthodomos — an enclosed rear room, often used as a treasury
A colonnade may run around this core; in a peripteral temple it runs right around.
Characteristics
- The side walls of the naos project forward and end in thickened wall ends, the antae. With two columns set between those antae, the temple is described as in antis.
- The pronaos is shallow relative to the naos; it marks the threshold and is not a room to occupy.
- It was often the place for votive offerings and inscriptions, and sometimes for a grille closing off access to the naos.
- The Roman temple type emphasises the pronaos strongly: by raising the temple on a high podium and placing the steps only at the front, the porch becomes the single unambiguous entrance.
Why the term matters
The pronaos is the prototype of a spatial principle that runs right through Western architecture: a roofed, half-open intermediate space in front of the actual entrance. That principle recurs in the portico, in the porch of the Romanesque and Gothic church, in the narthex, and in the veranda and entrance canopy of the modern house. Through Classicism and Neoclassicism the motif reached the courthouses, museums and town halls of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Related terms
- Naos
- Cella
- Temple in antis
- Portico
- Portal
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