Matroneum

A loft is a raised gallery or grandstand, which is open with a long side to a larger interior out.

Civil architecture

In secular buildings to find galleries especially when a continuous over several floors hall at the various levels will be made available. Add library halls galleries often assume the role of an increased intercourse, from which located on the higher floors bookshelves can be reached.

In auditoriums and concert halls, galleries serve as bleachers, which allow additional public can watch the presentation or the presentation from an elevated position. Galleries in the auditorium of a theater are often referred to as ranks. If it is divided into single, open only to the front cabins for a few seats, meaning they are lodges.

Sacred Architecture

Galleries are a popular use as component in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic religious building. They are here mostly to exude a certain group of the remaining community at worship.

Churches

Middle Ages

In the medieval sacral architecture, galleries find especially in the construction of the basilica, where they can occupy the space above the side aisles and the clerestory. One then speaks of a galleried basilica. In basilicas of the Romanesque and Gothic periods, the galleries usually open by arcades to the nave, the arcs correspond doing in their division with the underlying arcatures and the arched windows of the clerestory.

In the Basilica of the following construction of the gallery can be distinguished:

• True loft: A fully accessible gallery above the aisle that opens with arcades to the nave;
• Loggerhead gallery: The visible from the nave arcades open only to the roof of the side aisle, the resulting running gear is used only for maintenance purposes;
• Sham gallery: The visible from the nave arcades open directly into the aisle, so it is a purely aesthetic structural element.

Sham gallery, Notre- Dame de Châtel -Montagne

Loggerhead gallery ( schematic sectional view )

In the Romanesque and Early Gothic church architecture galleries above the aisles do not have a static function and serve instead of flying buttresses to absorb the side thrust of the nave vaults. The walkability plays only a subordinate or (in the case of sham gallery) no role in this context. The arcades of the gallery openings are part of the decorative structure of the nave walls. To distinguish from the gallery is the triforium, in the wall thickness of the nave wall running, the interior open walkway.

Regarding the construction can be distinguished:

• Open gallery: In Support dormant or cantilever mounted on the wall. Frequently executed in wood. Is often found in hall churches.
• Covered gallery: Located mostly on a side aisle and is equipped with its own flat ceiling or a vault covered. Opens with arcades or window-like wall openings to the main room.

Galleries were built mainly on the narrow western side of the nave. Galleries were quite different functions. Separately because of their height from the main gathering area of the church, but at the same time audibly and visually with the main ship in conjunction, they could be used for secrete certain groups of people from the rest of the community. Often they served - about as nuns' gallery - as a separate area for women, mostly in the western part of the nave of the abbey church, as they served as medical galleries. Also, class differences offered the opportunity of an exclusive use of the galleries by members of the upper classes. As a rule galleries, patronage lodges - Castle in churches as king or prince galleries - were the galleries the yard or reserved for the aristocracy. They often served as a singer Tribune and later named as a site for the organ, or organ loft organ loft.

Patronatsloge in Thurnau

Monastery Habsthal, St. Stephen, nuns' gallery

Regardless of the use of the gallery remained in the Catholic church is an optional component, which was not necessarily associated with a particular function. So there is also representative churches ( for example, hall churches ) without galleries, while in other cases wooden galleries were only installed later. Besides its function as a space they serve in Gewölbebasiliken often the static purpose of supporting the high-lying vaults of the nave side.

Protestant church

In the Protestant church particularly the Baroque era, the gallery has developed into an almost programmatic feature. She offered - in addition to its function as a ranking feature - recently the community a more direct acoustic and visual access to the pulpit as the starting point of proclaiming the Gospel. How to find - in addition to the popular and traditional in the Catholic west gallery space - in Protestant churches often two sides angled, three-sided U-shaped horseshoe galleries and four-sided and also the entire nave a transferring circular galleries. Part on a real lack of space and partly on a baroque representation need is to create an impressive double or multi layer constructions Empor due, as in the Protestant Churches of Peace Silesian Jawor and Swidnica one and the Dresden Frauenkirche ( 1743) on the other.

While the reformed galleries waived ornamentation, the Lutheran churches in the developed a partially diverse and rich image program. On the Empor fields there are thematically divided illustrations of biblical stories, sometimes in conjunction with other ecclesial, social, and moral reformation of historical symbolism and iconography. Also Bible verses were a popular design motif. Some galleries Catholic churches were also provided in addition to saints with biblical images.

Horseshoe gallery in the village church Schonwalde - ganglia (Brandenburg)

Synagogues

Galleries are often found in synagogues, especially in the representative religious buildings that arose in the course of civil emancipated Jewry in the 19th and early 20th century in Europe. Examples include the New Synagogue in Berlin ( 1866) or the synagogue Neudeggergasse in Vienna (1903 ). The galleries were in the synagogues of the traditional gender segregation during the service and were reserved for women.

Mosques

Also in mosques galleries in interior design application. You can, similar to the synagogues, form separated Betplätze for women. A characteristic of the Islamic religious building form is the Dikka, a free-standing grandstand, proclaimed from which the call to prayer or the Koran was recited.