Tambour (architecture)

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Sanahin Monastery , Armenia. The round drum attachment rises above the square crossing of the monastery church (10th – 12th centuries) and is provided with narrow light openings.

A vertical architectural element with a mostly round, more rarely also polygonal or oval cross-section, which functions as a connecting link above a mostly square structure and its roof consisting of a dome or a monastery vault , is referred to as a tambour (French for 'drum') .

function

A tambour is used to elevate, often also to illuminate, the dome over the crossing of a building. In the case of churches, this formerly important area - both architecturally and liturgically - could be emphasized more strongly and separately illuminated by a drum.

history

St. Basil's Cathedral , Moscow (1561)

Europe

Although no examples have survived , the earliest reels may have been located above the round warm water basins ( caldariums ) of Roman thermal baths , where their openings served both lighting and ventilation functions.

In the Byzantine architecture of late antiquity, they appear on churches and tombs ( San Vitale and the Arian Baptistery in Ravenna), then on the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and only a little later on Byzantine cross-domed churches and in Armenian architecture. The tambour of Aachen Cathedral can be derived from the ravennatic buildings - the earliest of its kind north of the Alps (see Ottmarsheim Abbey Church ).

Since the Middle Ages, drums exposed to light through narrow windows have played an important role as an architectural element in Greek and Russian Orthodox architecture in southern and eastern Europe (e.g. Archangel Michael Cathedral or St. Basil's Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin ). They are also found in southern Europe ( Florence Cathedral , St. Peter's Basilica in Rome ). Since the late Renaissance and especially in the Baroque period, they have reappeared in sacred buildings in Central Europe ( St Paul's Cathedral , London; Frauenkirche , Dresden) - after the interruption caused by Gothic architecture .

In secular architecture, tambours appear very late and remain extremely rare (e.g. Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, Capitol in Washington, Palace of Justice in Brussels).

Islam

Drum on Dome of the Rock and Dome of the Chain , Jerusalem (around 690)

As early as the 7th and 8th centuries, drums were found in the domed mosques of Islamic architecture, which was still largely Byzantine, but remained isolated there ( Dome of the Rock , Jerusalem; Umayyad Mosque , Damascus).

In the 15th century, the mausoleums ( qubbas ) of Timur in Samarqand and the Mamluk sultans in Egypt were provided with high drum domes.

In the 16th century, surrounding window wreaths illuminate the Ottoman domed mosques of Sinan in Istanbul , Edirne and elsewhere, all of which were inspired by the model of Hagia Sophia . As with their large predecessor, however, they only appear on the outside as real tambours, while inside the dome begins directly above the pendentives . An elevation of the structure by the tambour cannot be ascertained inside.

Possibly mediated by Armenian master builders of the 12th and 13th centuries, tambours were also known in parts of the Islamic Orient (Persia, Central Asia). They do not yet appear in the early architecture of India; on the other hand, in Mughal architecture, they are one of the characteristic components of the double-shell, mostly bulbous dome structures, the inner shell of which, however, is neither raised nor exposed.

See also

Other ways of raising and / or exposing the crossing area of ​​a structure are:

literature

Web links