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.
The palaestra: a court ringed by colonnades
Build the palaestra as a square or oblong court with colonnades all round, the side facing south doubled, and rooms for bathing, oiling and teaching opening off them; beside it lay out a running track with covered and open lanes.
Vitruvius explains the palaestra as a Greek building unfamiliar to Italians. At Priene the lower gymnasium, of the second century BC, is a colonnaded court with a washroom whose stone basins still have lion-head spouts, and beside it the stadium runs along the bottom of the town with a stoa on its north side.
Related rules
Let one simple ratio govern the whole: at the Parthenon the lower diameter is to the axial spacing, the width of the stylobate to its length, and the height of the order to the width of the front, all very nearly as 4 is to 9.
D : axial spacing ≈ 1.905 : 4.296 ≈ 4 : 9; stylobate 30.88 : 69.50 ≈ 4 : 9
Plan a Greek theatre by inscribing three squares in the orchestra circle; the side nearest the scene fixes the front of the stage (proscaenium), and the scene is set back to a line tangent to the circle.
proscaenium at r cos 45° ≈ 0.71 r from the centre; logeion 10–12 ft high
In a peripteral temple the flanks have twice as many intercolumniations as the front: six columns in front means eleven along each side, counting the corner columns twice.
side columns = 2n − 1 (Vitruvius) · 2n + 1 (Greek practice)
Divide the city into equal rectangular blocks by straight streets crossing at right angles, and assign whole blocks to the public buildings; but let walls follow the ground, not the grid.
Keep a free agora for public life, clear of merchandise and near the magistrates, the temples and the gymnasium; put buying and selling in a separate market place convenient for goods.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The palaestra: a court ringed by colonnades”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/vitruvius-palaestra. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.