rotunda

Definition

A round building, usually small, often with a dome.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin rotunda, from rotundus (“round”). In the architectural sense, from Sancta Maria Rotunda (the name for a church in the Pantheon).

Example Sentences

• "The rotunda begun but never completed by Abbot Wulfric (1047–59) at St Augustine’s Abbey as a link between the church of St Mary and that of St Peter and St Paul is an unusual and ambitious example of mid-eleventh-century English architecture which partly survives (fig. 4.6, top). […] Many of these rotundae are known to have had a special funerary function (as was the case at Canterbury)."
• "The purely Greek character of the temple is revealed in the fact that there is no portico aligning the structure; Roman tholoi and rotundae are usually distinguished by a portico."
• "Access to the shafts is gained via a brick entrance rotunda below a glass dome. The walls of these rotundae are built over the outer edge of caissons which hold the shafts; […]"