Glossary · O
Obelisk
A tall four-sided monolith tapering upward to a pyramidion, set up in pairs before Egyptian temple pylons as a solar emblem. Its height is typically about ten times the width of its base.
See also: Pyramidion, Pylon
Rules that use the word
The obelisk: a ray of the sun in stone. Cut the obelisk from a single block of granite, square in section, tapering to about two-thirds of its base width, capped by a pyramidion, and about ten times as tall as it is wide; set them in pairs before the pylon.
Straight streets between the great churches. Join the principal churches of the city by straight streets cut across hills and empty land, so that a pilgrim can walk from one to the next directly, and mark the end of every street with an obelisk visible from far away.
Three streets from one gate. Where the main road enters the city, open a piazza inside the gate and send three straight streets from it into the town, fanning from a common point marked by an obelisk, with a pair of matching churches in the angles between them.
The piazza as open arms. Before the mother church lay out an oval piazza enclosed by free-standing colonnades four columns deep, so that the church seems to embrace the faithful; set an obelisk at the centre and a fountain on each side along the cross axis, and join the oval to the church front by straight corridors.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters The Ancient World, Gardens and Landscape.
A feature of Ancient Egyptian, French formal garden architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Niche · Nosing · Noyane · Nymphaeum · Oculus · Ogee · Ondol · Onion dome