Exedra

Exedra of Pamphilidas, Acropolis of Lindos, Rhodes, Greece
The foundations and partial floor of a late Roman villa. The floored part is the exedra. The rest of the floor has deteriorated and is missing, with only parts of the hypocaust columns remaining. Hot air circulated through the hypocaust to heat the house.

An exedra (pl.: exedras or exedrae) is a semicircular architectural recess or platform, sometimes crowned by a semi-dome, and either set into a building's façade or free-standing. The original Greek sense (ἐξέδρα, 'a seat out of doors') was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for conversation. An exedra may also be expressed by a curved break in a colonnade, perhaps with a semicircular seat.

The exedra would typically have an apsidal podium that supported the stone bench. The free-standing (open air) exedra, often supporting bronze portrait sculpture, is a familiar Hellenistic structure,[1] characteristically sited along sacred ways or in open places in sanctuaries, such as at Delos or Epidaurus. Some Hellenistic exedras were built in relation to a city's agora, as in Priene. Monument architects have also used this free-standing style in modern times.

  1. ^ Suzanne Freifrau von Thüngen, Die frei stehende griechische Exedra (Mainz:Zabern) 1994. Reviewed by Christopher Ratté in American Journal of Archaeology 101.1 (January 1997:181–82). Von Thüngen's catalogue lists 163 exedras.