Drum

Rules that use the word

Raise the dome on a drum. Lift the dome on a cylindrical or polygonal drum pierced with windows between the ring of the pendentives and the springing of the dome, to light the centre of the church and to make the dome visible from afar.

The cross-in-square: nine bays. Divide a square naos into nine bays: dome the central one on a drum over four columns, barrel-vault the four arms of the cross, and cover the four corner bays lower; add three apses to the east and a narthex to the west.

Five domes in a quincunx. Crown the four corner bays of a cross-in-square with smaller domes on drums around the great central dome, making a five-domed quincunx.

The onion dome on a tall drum. Lift each dome on a tall drum and give it a bulbous outer shell that swells beyond the drum and draws up to a point under the cross; build the shell as a light timber frame sheathed in metal over the structural vault below.

Tiers of kokoshniki. Mount from the walls to the drum in stepped tiers of decorative gables with pointed ogee heads, the kokoshniki, each tier set back and narrower than the one below, so that the body of the church rises into its domes in a pyramid of arches.

The double dome. Build two domes, one above the other: an inner shell proportioned to the room below and an outer shell raised on a tall drum and proportioned to the city outside.

Where it appears in the book

In the chapters Domes, The Classical World, Byzantium and the Early Church, The Islamic World, Renaissance and Baroque.

A feature of Byzantine, Russian, Persian Islamic (Seljuk, Timurid and Safavid), Renaissance, Mughal, Baroque architecture.

Nearby in the glossary

Dougong · Doukou · Drift · Dromos · Duck · Eaves · Echinus · Egg-and-dart