Cupola

All you want to know about Cupola

For other uses, see Cupola (disambiguation).

The dome of St Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, is topped by a double cylindrical cupola, or lantern, with a conical spire.

In architecture, a cupola is a domelike structure that forms the roof of a building or of a building element such as a tower. When it forms a roof, a cupola is often topped by a lantern, an ornamental structure with openings or windows to admit light or provide ventilation (itself also sometimes referred to as a cupola). The word derives, via Italian, from the lower Latin cupula (classical Latin cupella from the Greek kupellon) small cup (lat. cupa) indicating a vault resembling an upside down cup.^[1] The term cupola has come to include any small structure that sits atop the roof of a building. In some cases, this is a room that can be reached via an interior stairway. Such a structure can also be called a belvedere.

In Victorian architecture, often seen in older homes of Upstate New York, especially in the Finger Lakes region, in eastern Connecticut,^[2] New Jersey and northern Pennsylvania, a cupola is often a small room that extends above the main roof line. Cupolas may be square, rectangular, octagonal or round. In local folklore, they are regarded as Indian lookouts, but given the date they were more likely created simply to offer a scenic view, which fits with the other name, belvedere, an Italian term denoting a fair view.

The term cupola is also often used for a projection above the roof of a barn, which is primarily there for ventilation purposes.

Copper Quadrilateral Cupola

Notes

^ In Italian, cupola simply means dome, and the ornamental top element is called lanterna.
^ Stanley, William, The 9-Mile Square, Norwich, Connecticut, USA, The Norwich Historical Society, 2005: photographs on pages 153 and 347