‹‹‹ Vitr. 5.1.5 | Table of Contents | Vitr. 5.1.7 ›››
6Basilicæ, similar to that which I designed and carried into execution in the Julian colony of Fano, will not be deficient either in dignity or beauty. The proportions and symmetry of this are as follow. The middle vault, between the columns, is one hundred and twenty feet long, and sixty feet wide. The portico round it, between the walls and columns, is twenty feet wide. The height of the columns, including the capitals, is fifty feet, their thickness five feet, and they have pilasters behind them twenty feet high, two feet and a half wide, and one and a half thick, supporting beams which carry the floor of the portico. Above these, other pilasters are placed,eighteen feet high, two feet wide, and one foot thick, which also receive timbers for carrying the rafters of the portico, whose roof is lower than the vault.
6But basilicas of the greatest dignity and beauty may also be constructed in the style of that one which I erected, and the building of which I superintended at Fano. Its proportions and symmetrical relations were established as follows. In the middle, the main roof between the columns is 120 feet long and sixty feet wide. Its aisle round the space beneath the main roof and between the walls and the columns is twenty feet broad. The columns, of unbroken height, measuring with their capitals fifty feet, and being each five feet thick, have behind them pilasters, twenty feet high, two and one half feet broad, and one and one half feet thick, which support the beams on which is carried the upper flooring of the aisles. Above them are other pilasters, eighteen feet high, two feet broad, and a foot thick, which carry the beams supporting the principal raftering and the roof of the aisles, which is brought down lower than the main roof.