Engaged column

Engaged columns embedded in the side walls of the cella of the Maison Carrée at Nimes (right side of the image)

In architecture, an engaged column is a column embedded in a wall and partly projecting from the surface of the wall, sometimes defined as semi or three-quarter detached. Engaged columns are rarely found in classical Greek architecture, and then only in exceptional cases, but in Roman architecture they exist in profusion, most commonly embedded in the cella walls of pseudoperipteral buildings

Engaged columns serve a similar function as wall buttresses but are distinct from pilasters, which by definition are ornamental and not structural.

Gallery

• 
  Engaged columns embedded in the walls of The Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra in Rome
• 
  Semi-detached columns flanking a door of the Ostia Antica, in Rome
• 
  Semi-detached columns on the Villa on the Piazza dei Signori in Vicenza, Italy
• 
  Semi-detached columns on the The Trinity Church in Żórawina near Wrocław, Poland
• 
  Engaged columns on the Mihrab at the Mezquita de Córdoba

See also

• Decastyle
• Hexastyle
• Hypostyle
• Octostyle
• Peristyle
• Portico
• Tetrastyle

References

• Stierlin, Henri The Roman Empire: From the Etruscans to the Decline of the Roman Empire, TASCHEN, 2002
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)