Introduction
Stoa is an ancient Greek term applied to a type of long, narrow, free-standing building with a colonnaded façade. The stoa developed as an architectural form in Archaic Greece, and was most popular from the fifth through first centuries BCE. The stoa should be distinguished from the colonnaded avenues typical of late Hellenistic and Roman cities and from the Roman porticus.
Definition
The stoa is a distinctly Greek architectural form of the portico that appears in a variety of forms from the Archaic (c. 650–480 BCE) through the Hellenistic periods (c. 323–50 BCE) and is found in sites throughout the Greek world. The simplest stoa was composed of three walls and a colonnaded front, yet this simplest form does not appear often in the archaeological record. Typically, the stoa form had a second inner colonnade that supported a ridge roof. Some stoas had small rooms behind the portico, some had two or more storeys, and some had projecting wings at either end, forming L or Pi...
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References
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Further Reading
Bringmann, K. & H. von Steuben. 1995. Schenkungen hellenistischer Herrscher an griechische Städte und Heiligtümer. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Broneer, O. 1954. The south stoa and its Roman successors. Corinth V1. Part 4. Princeton (NJ): American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Lawrence, A. 1996.G reek architecture. 5th. edn., revised by R. A. Tomlinson. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Roux, G. 1987.L a terrasse d’Attale I. Fouilles de Delphes II. Topographie et architecture. Paris: Boccard.
Vallois, R. 1923. Le Portique de Philippe. Délos VII. 1. Paris: Boccard.
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Damer, E.Z. (2014). Stoa. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1478
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