Lantern ceiling

The lantern ceiling is a ceiling construction that is particularly known from Asian buildings and is used to close mostly square rooms. It consists of four beams or ceiling panels placed diagonally across the corners of the square, leaving a square opening in the middle. Several layers of beams or panels are placed over this opening, so that the square cut out in the middle tapers to form an air hole through which light can enter the room like a lantern.

The lantern ceiling is particularly common in traditional Central Asian residential buildings as a wooden beam construction. Four bars, which are placed diagonally across the corners of the room, carry additional bars, each arranged diagonally to one another. It was conveyed to India and East Asia in the early Middle Ages through monumental buildings, especially Buddhist shrines such as those of Turfan and Bamiyan . In Indian architecture , the lantern ceiling was constructed from stone slabs and provided with a cap stone so that no more light could enter. At the end of the mandapas (halls) of Hindu and Jain temples, it symbolizes the sky, which in Indian cosmology is usually described as a square, and is usually decorated with mythological images and symbols. In East Asia, lantern ceilings with a similar symbolic meaning are found primarily in Buddhist cave monasteries and in tombs.

source

• Klaus Fischer , Christa-M. Friederike Fischer: Indian architecture from the Islamic period . Holle Verlag, Baden-Baden 1976, ISBN 3-873-55145-4 .