A tholos (; ; ; ) is a form of building that was widely used in the Greco-Roman world. It is a round structure with a circular wall and a roof, usually built upon a couple of steps (a podium), and often with a ring of columns supporting a conical or domed roof.
It differs from a monopteros (Ancient Greek:ὁ μονόπτερος from the Polytonic: μόνος, only, single, alone, and , wing), a circular colonnade supporting a roof but without any walls, which therefore does not have a cella (room inside).Curl, James Stevens (2006). Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, 2nd ed., OUP, Oxford and New York, p. 500. . Both these types are sometimes called rotundas.
An increasingly large series of round buildings were constructed in the developing tradition of classical architecture until Late antiquity, which are covered here. Medieval round buildings are covered at rotunda. From the Renaissance onwards the classical tholos form had an enduring revival, now often topped by a dome, especially as an element in much larger buildings.
The tholos is not to be confused with the beehive tomb, or "tholos tomb" in modern terminology, a distinct form in Late Bronze Age Greece and other areas.Yarwood, 5–6 But many other round tombs and mausolea were built, especially for Roman emperors.
Classical world
Greece In Ancient Greek architecture, the tholos form was used for a variety of buildings with different purposes. A few were round temples of Greek peripteral design completely encircled by a colonnade, but most served other functions, and some were architecturally innovative. According to A. W. Lawrence, by the 4th century BC, "their more or less secular functions gave partial exemption from the austere conventions that governed the design of temples".Lawrence, 187; Yarwood, 21 No Greek tholos except the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates remains anything like intact, with most known only by excavation of their distinctive circular foundations, and other parts found lying on the site.See Thompson for a detailed excavation report.
The large building known as "the tholos" (but also "the parasol")Thompson, 71 in the centre of Athens, just off the agora, at the least served as the dining-hall for the executive group of the boule, a council of 500 citizens chosen by lot from ten "tribes" to run daily affairs of the city, since a kitchen leads off the main circular hall. It may also have functioned as their debating chamber or prytaneion.Thompson, 147–151 It was about 60 feet across, and built around 470 BC.Lawrence, 185; Thompson, 128; Perseus database page
Inside six columns supported the original conical roof, which seems have been covered with terracotta tiles round the lower parts, and perhaps bronze sheets higher up, leading to an acroterion at the apex, as seems to have been the case in the Philippeion. However this roof seems to have been destroyed by fire around 400 BC,Thompson, 129, 132 and was probably replaced by one using bronze sheets.Thompson, 69–71 The original building, from not long after the Persian sack of Athens in 489–479 BC is "very plain",Lawrence, 183 with no exterior columns, showing "utter economy [in] its construction".Thompson, 128
The famous Tholos of Delphi was nearly 13.5 metres across. It has been dated to 370–360 BC. Its role remains unclear. There were 20 Doric columns around the exterior, and ten smaller Corinthian columns around the inside of the wall, rising up from a low stone bench. The building had "a more decorative treatment than would then have been permissible in a temple". It is now partially reconstructed at the site.Lawrence, 183–185 (185 quoted); Yarwood, 21
Next to the temple at the Sanctuary of Asclepius, Epidaurus was "the finest of all tholoi according to ancient opinion". This was designed by the sculptor Polykleitos the Younger around 360 BC, and was 22 metres across. An inscription tells us the building was called the thymela or "place of sacrifice". It used the Corinthian order, still rather an innovation, for a ring of 14 columns inside, and the "extraordinary dainty" version of the capitals here was probably an influential model for later buildings. It may have introduced to the Corinthian the flower (or "rosette") touching the abacus in the centre of each face. Unlike a Greek temple, it had at least two windows flanking the doorway, and perhaps more higher up.Lawrence, 185
Another Corinthian tholos was the small Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, about 334 BC, the first surviving building to use the Corinthian order on the outside – there was no inside.Lawrence, 187
The Philippeion in the Altis of Olympia ( BC) was a circular memorial in limestone and marble, the rather cramped interior containing chryselephantine (ivory and gold) statues of Philip II of Macedon's family; himself, Alexander the Great, Olympias, Amyntas III and Eurydice I. Columns were Ionic around the outside, with engaged Corinthian half-columns inside.Lawrence, 186–187
The largest Greek tholos, of uncertain function, was built in the Samothrace temple complex in the 260s BC. It is often called the Arsinoeum (or Arsinoëion, Arsinoë Rotunda), as a dedication tablet for the Ptolemaic Queen Arsinoe II of Egypt has survived. The sanctuary was a great Hellenistic centre of Greco-Roman mysteries, by this date becoming crowded with buildings.Short video walk-through from Emory University The tholos was 20 metres across (from the lowest step) and, as reconstructed, 12.65 m high, with the lower parts of the wall blank, but small columns high up, where any windows were also placed."Rotunda of Arsinoe II", Emory University website; Lawrence, 187–188 One of the many reconstructions proposed by scholars was used as the basis of the Arlington Reservoir, Massachusetts, in the 1920s, functioning as a 2,000,000 gallon water tower.NRHP listing The Befreiungshalle (1840s) near Kelheim, Bavaria, is a victory memorial on the same theme.
Roman world
By far the most famous roofed round Roman building is the Pantheon, Rome. However this sharply differs from other classical tholoi in that it is entered though a very large flat temple front with a projecting portico with three rows of columns, while the rest of the exterior is a blank wall without columns or windows, so the circular form is rather obscured from the front until the visitor enters, and sees the enormous circular space.Yarwood, 47, 50, plan at 51
Temples of the goddess Vesta, which were usually small, were typically circular, but not all round temples were dedicated to her. The three best-known survivals, in or near Rome, were named "Temple of Vesta" by post-classical writers, in two cases without any good evidence. One is now usually called the Temple of Hercules Victor, while the old name continues to be used for the Temple of Vesta, Tivoli, in the absence of any firm evidence for the actual dedication – perhaps to the Tiburtine Sibyl. The identification of the Temple of Vesta, Rome, just next to the House of the Vestals, is secure.Yarwood, 52
In Roman cities a tholos could often be found in the centre of the macellum (market), where it might have been where fish were sold. Other uses for the central tholos have been suggested, such as the place where official weights and measures were held for reference or as shrines to the gods of the market place. Some macella had a water fountain or water feature in the centre of their courtyard instead of a tholos structure.
The Romans in effect developed a new form in the amphitheatre, of which the Colosseum in Rome is the largest, best known and best preserved. These were mostly oval rather than round and, like the semi-circular Roman theatres, un-roofed, except for the velarium, a cloth awning over some parts.Yarwood, 55–59
Tombs
The circular tumulus was the most common form of early Greek tomb, often revetted by a vertical or sloping stone wall round the base, a type still seen in abundance in Etruscan necropoli like the "Necropolis of the Banditaccia" at Cerveteri near Rome. The top was a mound of earth, with (in the Greek world) one or more upright stones at the summit. The Etruscan burial chambers were below ground level and rather large, crowded with family sarcophagi and grave goods (most surviving painted Greek vases come from Etruscan tombs).Lawrence, 183; Yarwood, 34
Local rulers around the edges of the Hellenic world constructed some significant tumulus tombs. The largest was that made about 600 BC for King Alyattes of Lydia (in modern Turkey), the father of Croesus, which dominates the elite cemetery site now called Bin Tepe. Herodotus visited it and says that stones at the summit recorded that it was constructed by the market traders, craftsmen and prostitutes of the nearby capital Sardis, the prostitutes making the largest contribution. It was 900 feet high, and nearly a quarter of a mile in diameter. A large mound, now reduced and slumped at the sides, remains, as does the barrel-vaulted passage to the looted tomb chamber at the centre.Lawrence, 183
The so-called "Tomb of Tantalus", of a similar date, was fully faced in stone, with a diameter of 33.55 metres, and a height about the same. There was a vertical wall at the base, then a conical roof, much of which survived until 1835, when excavations led by Charles Texier using labour from the French Navy collapsed it. The passage leading to the rectangular burial chamber at the centre was entirely filled in with stones. The chamber was corbelled to form a pointed arch shape between two straight end walls. This was also the largest monument in a cemetery, now on the outskirts of İzmir.Perrot, Georges and Chipiez, Charles, History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia, 45–49, 1892, Chapman and Hall (translation from the French); Lawrence, 183
The Madghacen (or "Medracen") is a royal mausoleum, perhaps of the 3rd century BC, of the Berber Numidian kings in Numidia, Algeria, with a similar shape. Though independent, the Numidian kingdom was increasingly involved in Mediterranean power politics, and an architect familiar with classical architecture has surrounded the vertical section of wall at the base with engaged columns in the Doric order, "heavily proportioned and with smooth shafts, beneath a cavetto cornice". The whole exterior was, and very largely still is, covered with a stone facing, the straight cone of the upper part (except for a flat top) formed into steps, like the pyramids of Egypt.Lawrence, 189;
The Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania, long called the Tombeau de la Chrétienne ("Tomb of the Christian Woman"), is very similar, but a good deal larger and with Ionic columns around the base. It is the mausoleum of the thoroughly Romanized client king Juba II of Numidia and Mauretania (died 46 AD), and his queen Cleopatra Selene II, daughter of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony. However, the design "seems definitely Greek".Lawrence, 189
Imperial Rome
Juba and Cleopatra Selene were probably still living in polite captivity in Rome when construction of the circular Mausoleum of Augustus began there around 28 BC. As (nearly) restored in the 21st century, there is an outer ring, then a space around the cylinder with the tomb-chamber, where the ashes of many of the Julio-Claudian dynasty were interred. Stairs lead up to the roof. The large tombs of elite Roman families shared some of the characteristics of weekend cottages, with gardens, orchards, kitchens, and spacious apartments. Many liked to visit their family tomb on birthdays or anniversaries, for a family meal and day of reflection.Campbell, 31–32, 35–36, 41–42