Andrea Palladio · The Second Book
Chapter X. Of Egyptian Halls
THE following design is of the Egyptian halls, which resembled Basilica’s very much, Plate (that is, places where justice was administerd) of which mention shall be made when we treat of the piazza’s: because in these halls there was a portico commonly made with the columns at a distance from the wall, as they are in the Basilica’s; and over the columns there were the architraves, the frizes, and the cornices. The space between the columns and the wall was covered with a pavement. This pavement was uncovered, and formed a Corridor, or balcony, round. Above the said columns there was a continued wall, with semi-columns on the inside, one fourth part less than the abovesaid; and between the intercolumniations there were windows, which gave light to the hall, and through which, from the said uncover’d pavement, one might see into it. These halls must needs have been of an admirable magnificence, as well by reason of the ornament of the columns, as also for its height; because the soffit lay over the cornice of the second order, and must have been very commodious when festivals and entertainments were made there,
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.