Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns: the Greek orders

A column is a tall stone post that holds up a roof. In ancient Greek it was called a κίων. Today Greeks say κίονας in a book about history, and κολόνα in everyday talk.

A Greek column has three parts:

• the base, the foot at the bottom (some columns have none);
• the shaft, the long body, often cut with straight grooves called flutes, ραβδώσεις;
• the capital, the wider top, κιονόκρανο, which carries the heavy stone beams.

The Greeks built in a few fixed styles. Each style had its own kind of column, its own proportions and its own decoration on the beams above. In English we call such a style an order. In Greek it is a ρυθμός, the same word as "rhythm" in music. There are three Greek orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. The easiest way to recognise them is to look up at the capital.

The Doric order, δωρικός ρυθμός, is the oldest. Its name comes from the Dorians, one of the Greek peoples. It was used in mainland Greece and in Greek cities in southern Italy and Sicily. Experts think its shapes come from older buildings made of wood, which were later copied in stone.

A Doric column is thick and strong. It has no base: it stands straight on the top step of the temple. Its capital is very plain, like a round cushion with a flat square slab on top.

The most famous Doric temple is the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. It was built for the goddess Athena between 447 and 438 BC, and its sculptures were finished in 432 BC. The architects were Iktinos and Kallikrates, and the sculptor Pheidias led the work. The Parthenon is Doric on the outside, but it also has some Ionic parts inside.

The Ionic order, ιωνικός ρυθμός, is named after the Ionians, Greeks who lived on the coast of Asia Minor (today's western Turkey) and on the islands of the Aegean. Some of its biggest temples stood there, like the temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

An Ionic column is slimmer and lighter than a Doric one. It stands on a base made of rings of stone. Its capital is easy to spot: it has two spirals that curl down on the left and on the right, like a rolled-up scroll. In Greek these spirals are called έλικες.

The Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote a book on architecture, compared the two styles to people. He said the Doric column was like a strong man, and the Ionic column like a woman, with the spirals as her curls. That is his comparison, not a rule of the Greek builders.

In Athens, the Erechtheion on the Acropolis is an Ionic temple. It was built between 421 and 406 BC for Athena and Poseidon.

The Corinthian order, κορινθιακός ρυθμός, is the youngest and the most decorated. It is named after the city of Corinth. It is very close to the Ionic order: the big difference is the capital, which is covered with carved leaves of a plant called acanthus, άκανθος, with small spirals on top.

Vitruvius tells a story about how it began. A young girl from Corinth died, and her nurse put her favourite things in a basket on her grave, with a roof tile on top. An acanthus plant grew up around the basket. A sculptor called Callimachus saw it and made column tops in that shape. It is a lovely legend, but nobody can prove it.

The oldest Corinthian capital found so far was inside the temple of Apollo at Bassae, in the mountains of the Peloponnese, built around 420–400 BC. At first the Greeks used Corinthian columns mostly inside buildings. Later the Romans loved this order and used it everywhere, for example at the huge temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens. The Romans also added two orders of their own, the Tuscan and the Composite.