Build up a façade in layers: let the wall advance in stages towards the central bay, double the pilasters or columns as it advances, and break the entablature forward over every support.
The two-storey church front
Front a basilican church with two storeys of the order: the lower as wide as nave and chapels, the upper as wide as the nave alone, joined by scrolls and crowned by a pediment.
Il Gesù (reconstructed): lower ≈ 34 m wide, upper ≈ 20 m; scrolls fill the difference
The mother church of the Jesuits established the pattern of the Counter-Reformation church front for two centuries. It follows Alberti’s solution at Santa Maria Novella (Scrolls to join nave and aisles) but gives it a new emphasis on the centre: the order doubles, the wall steps forward in stages towards the door, and the ornament concentrates on the axis.
Toggle the scrolls off in the figure and the problem they solve is plain: without them the narrow upper storey sits on the wide lower one like a box on a table, and the lean-to roofs of the side chapels show behind.
Related rules
Mark the main door by setting a segmental pediment inside a larger triangular one, or by breaking the pediment open to hold a cartouche or statue.
To unify a façade of two or more storeys, run a single order of pilasters or columns through all of them, from the base to the main cornice.
Divide the inside of a dome into coffers that shrink in step with the meridians as they rise, so that their perspective deepens the dome and draws the eye to the light of the lantern.
Let the wall of a façade curve in plan (concave, convex, concave) so that the front answers the street, the light and the space within, and the order bends with it.
Avoid the ornaments that have no model in the hut: broken or curved pediments, pediments on the long side of a roof, orders piled storey upon storey on a church front, arches carried on columns, and twisted or cabled shafts.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The two-storey church front”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/scroll-facade. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.