Ambulacrum: An architectural word that denotes an atrium, courtyard, or parvise in front of a basilica or church that is surrounded by arcades or colonnades, or trees, and which often contains a fountain. It also can denote a walking bath that trees delineate. 

 

Amphitheater: In Classical History, an oval or occasionally circular building with a central open space or arena surrounded by tiered seating, used for public entertainments and spectacles. 

 

Aqueduct: Conduits constructed throughout Rome’s republican and imperial periods that brought water from outside sources into cities and towns. 

 

Arcuation: The use of the arch in building; arched work. 

 

Armory: A place where arms are kept; an arsenal. 

 

Atrium: A large open-air or skylight-covered space surrounded by a building. A common feature in Ancient Roman dwellings, providing light and ventilation to the interior. 

 

Barracks: Usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. 

 

Basilica: In Ancient Roman architecture, a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town’s forum. Typically large rectangular buildings with a central nave flanked by two or more longitudinal ailes, with the roof at two levels, being higher in the center over the nave to admit a clerestory and lower over the aisle-sides. In late antiquity, church buildings were typically constructed with a basilica’s architectural plan. 

 

Bastion: Defensive projection, usually canted on plan and with battered sides, at an angle of a fortress from which the ground in front of the ramparts may be viewed and raked with fire. 

 

Buttress: Exterior support, usually of masonry, projecting from the face of a wall and serving either to strengthen it or to resist the side thrust created by the load on an arch or a roof. 

 

Cavedi (Cavaedium): The central hall or court within an Ancient Roman house, often synonymous with atrium. 

 

Cella: The inner chamber of an ancient Greek or Roman temple in classical antiquity. 

 

Compluvium: A space left unroofed over the court of a dwelling in Ancient Rome, through which the rain fell into the impluvium or cistern.

 

Corinthian Column: The most ornate, sleek and slender of the three Greek orders of architecture; they are distinguished by a decorative bell-shaped capital with volutes, two rows of acanthus leaves and an elaborate cornice. In many instances, the column is fluted. 

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Emplecton: A method of building or a type of masonry consisting of a double external wall of close-fitting stonework or brickwork, with a core of rubble and mortar or rubble and clay, sometimes also incorporating cross walls or blocks used for reinforcement and to bind the faces together. 

 

Facade: The face or front of a building towards a street or other open place, esp. The principal front. Also of an architectural design concerned with elegance, etc., in the facade of a building alone. 

 

Feritoie: AKA embrasure; an opening in a battlement between the two raised solid portions, referred to as crenel or crenelle in a space hollowed out throughout the thickness of a wall by the establishment of a bay. This term designates the internal part of this space, relative to the closing device, food or window. In fortification this refers to the outward splay of a window or arrow slit on the inside. 

 

Frieze: In the classical architecture of Ancient Greece and Rome, a frieze is a long and narrow sculptural band that runs along the middle of an entablature, used for decorative purposes. It sits on the top of the column capitals, in between the architrave on the lowest level and the cornice at the top. 

 

Impluvium: a low basin in the center of a household atrium, into which rainwater flowed down from the roof through the compluvium. 

 

Keep: Strongest portion of the fortification of a castle, the place of last resort in case of siege or attack. It was either a single tower or a larger fortified enclosure.

 

Lintel: Post and lintel is a building system where strong horizontal elements are held up by strong vertical elements with large spaces between them. This is usually used to hold up a roof, creating a largely open space beneath, for whatever use the building is designed. The horizontal elements are called lintel, and the supporting elements may be called columns or posts. 

 

Loggia: A covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns or arches. They can be on principal fronts and/or sides of a building and are not meant for entrance but as an outdoor sitting room.

 

Marmol: Marble, granular limestone or dolomite that has been recrystallized under the influence of heat, pressure, and aqueous solutions. 

 

Mausoleum: A large, sepulchral monument, typically made of stone, that is used to inter and enshrine the remains of a famous or powerful person. 

 

Milliarium: A stone that was placed alongside Roman roads. Such stones were used from about the 3rd century BCE. They marked the distance between two towns, and were placed at intervals of one Roman mile. 

 

Obelisk: a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Ancient obelisks are monolithic, that is, consisting of a single stone.

 

Oecus: Hall or large room in a Roman house, usually with columns around the interior, like an atrium without compluvium or impluvium. (Oxford Reference)

Parapet: A dwarf wall or heavy railing around the edge of a roof, balcony, terrace, or stairway designed either to prevent those behind it from falling over or to shelter them from attack from the outside. During the Roman era, they were often formed of large slabs of marble pierced with holes, forming a pattern of squares and diagonals. 

 

Portico: Colonnaded porch or entrance to a structure, or a covered walkway supported by regularly spaced columns. Formed the entrances to ancient Greek temples. 

 

Rampart: Thick wall in fortifications for defense, with a walkway or platform on top for the defenders, and a battlemented parapet. Also a defensive mound of earth, with an inclined slope on the outside, its top flat and wide enough for guns and troop-movements, protected by a parapet. 

 

Reticulate work: In Latin opus reticulatum; a facing used for concrete walls in Roman architecture from about the 1st century BCE to the early first century CE. They were built using a small pyramid shaped tuff, a volcanic stone embedded into a concrete core. 

 

Sepulcher: A tomb or burial-place, a building, vault, or excavation, made for the interment of a human body. 

 

Stucco: Fine exterior or interior plasterwork used as three-dimensional ornamentation, as a smooth paintable surface, or as a wet ground for fresco painting. 

 

Tablinum: In Roman architecture, a tablinum was a room generally situated on one side of the atrium and opposite to the entrance; it opened in the rear onto the peristyle, with either a large window or only an anteroom or curtain. 

 

Travertine: A white or light-colored concretionary limestone, formed by the precipitation of calcium carbonate from springs, or from ground or surface water; esp. A hard, dense variety used as a building material.

 

Vestibule: The anteroom or entrance hall to a larger space such as an apartment or building (in Latin vestibulum was a court in front of a Roman house with access to the street on one side). 

Villa: A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions.