Cut a shaft with sixteen shallow flutes or facets, give it a square abacus and a low round base: the “proto-Doric” column of the Middle Kingdom rock tombs at Beni Hasan.
Rules · Site · Plans · Proportion
The altar to the east, lower than the god
Set the altar to face the east, and always lower than the statues in the temple, so that those who pray and sacrifice look up towards the god; make it high for Jupiter and the gods of the sky, low for Vesta and Mother Earth.
The altar stood in the open, before the temple, and the sacrifice was made there, not in the cella, which held the statue and the offerings. Vitruvius’s short chapter ends his book on temples: the altar is the last part to be placed, on the line from the door.
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Plan the principal hall as a long rectangle entered on its short side through a porch with two columns between the side walls and a vestibule, and put a great round hearth in the centre of the hall, ringed by four columns carrying a raised roof.
An arch pushes outward on its supports as well as down. For the same load and span the horizontal push grows as the rise falls: halve the rise and you roughly double the thrust.
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On the angles of a pediment set acroteria as high as half the tympanum, and on its apex one an eighth higher.
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Make the furniture after the antique: the chair as the Greek klismos, its broad back curved to the sitter and its legs swept out like sabres; the couch with one scrolled end; tables on a central pillar and claws or on lion monopodia; and give each piece the plain, broad surfaces and the ornament of the vases and reliefs it is drawn from.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The altar to the east, lower than the god”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/vitruvius-altar-east. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.