Prostyle is an architectural term designating temples (especially

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

) featuring a row of

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

s on the front. The term is often used as an

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...

when referring to the

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

of a classical building, which projects from the main structure. First used in Etruscan and Greek temples, this motif was later incorporated by the Romans into their temples. Examples of prostyle include the

Temple of Athena Nike A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temple ...

, Akropolis, Athens, a prostyle tetrastyle (i.e. with four columns). There are also prostyle hexastyle and prostyle octastyle temples. This architectural element probably originated in the eastern Greek isles in the 8th century BCE, but there are also many examples in archaic temples in southern Italy. The subsequent evolution of temple design came with the amphiprostyle, where there are rows of columns both in front and at the back of the temple.

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* Columns and entablature Ancient Greek architecture {{Architecturalelement-stub