Domes Facts & Worksheets

A dome is a hollow architectural element forming the roof of a building or structure. Dome forms and terminology vary and can be rectangular or square. The apex can be opened or closed with a roof lantern and cupola.

See the fact file below for more information on Domes, or you can download our 33-page Domes worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

History of Domes

• Domes were built in Mesopotamia, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese, and indigenous building traditions worldwide. 
• Byzantine and Sasanian architecture inspired medieval Europe and Islam. Renaissance domes were popular in early modern Italy and Ottoman architecture. Baroque and Neoclassical architecture resembled Roman domes.
• The advancement in architecture made it possible to create different types of domes. 
• Dome-building materials include mud, snow, brick, wood, stone, concrete, metal, glass, and plastic. 
• Dome symbolism impacted mortuary, celestial, and governmental customs. Dome-shaped buildings include churches, legislatures, and stadiums.
• The English word “dome” comes from the ancient Greek and Latin “domus” (house), which means a renowned abode, such as a “House of God” Italian “duomo,” German/Icelandic/Danish “dom” (cathedral), and English dome designated Town-House, Guild-Hall, State-House, and Meeting-House in a city as late as 1656. A dome signified the cupola vault by 1660.
• In the 18th century, several of the most spectacular Houses of God built featured large domes.
• Today’s domes have several names reflecting their shapes, traditions, and symbolic meanings. Archaic shelter shapes were reproduced in more lasting materials. 
• Greek geometry and Roman standards inspired the hemispherical shape of modern domes, but other patterns prevailed, notably a pointed and bulbous tradition in early Islamic mosques.
• Inconsistent nomenclatures like cloister vaults and domical vaults complicate modern academic study. In dictionaries, “dome” is unclear. It describes hemispherical or spanning elements. Hemispherical roofs, revolving arches, and circular or polygonal vaults are defined. Vertical sections might be pointed, bulbous, elliptical, bulbous, high profile, hemispherical, or flattened.
• Corbel domes are called “false” domes because each horizontal layer of stones is stretched inward. A wooden dome might be referred to as a “false” dome. 
• Finto refers to 17th-century vaults made of reed mats and gypsum cement. “True” domes have wedge-shaped voussoirs with central joints. Soil compresses a corbelled subterranean dome.
• Academics disagree on whether corbelling is permissible and if sail vault lowers should be called pendentives. Pendentive domes are simple or compound. 
• Simple domes have pendentives in the same sphere. In a compound dome, pendentives form a circular base for the dome or drum.
• Engineering and architecture lack a shared dome language; engineering concentrates on structural behavior, and architecture on form and symbolism. 
• New materials and structural methods in the 20th century allowed large dome-shaped buildings that varied from normal compressive masonry domes. 
• The common term is the long-span roof.

Elements of Domes

• A cupola is a roof or turret dome. The dome’s “crown” is its top. Intrados and extrados are a dome’s interior and exterior. “Springing” is a dome’s base, while “haunch” is midway between the base and the top. Domes are supported by elliptical or circular walls called drums. 
• A “rotunda” is a ground-level structure.
• Drums, or “tholobates,” may have windows. A “tambour” or “lantern” supports a cupola over a dome’s oculus.
• Procedures are utilized to bridge the dome’s base and supporting walls when they don’t match. In Seljuk and Ottoman architecture, corbelling projects horizontal strata from the wall to the dome to form an octagonal base with diagonal lintels. Arched corners are stronger.
• A variety of these techniques use what are called “squinches.” A squinch is a single or set of many arches over an internal corner. Trumpet arches or half-domes are also squinches. Hangings replaced squinches. Pendentives connect a dome square bay to its circular base. The pendentives’ diameter is the square bay’s diagonal.

Materials of Domes

• Before baked brick and stone, Middle Eastern domes were composed of mud-brick. Light and flexible wood allows for huge dome spans. Most domes were fashioned of less flexible materials by the 7th century. Covering wooden domes with copper or lead provided protection from the weather. Stone domes were more expensive and smaller than brick; timber was used for vast spans.
• Roman concrete used stone and mortar. Heated clay became Roman bricks. Sixth-century vaults were made of brick and masonry. Pozzolana, a natural material was used in central Italy. Before the Industrial Age, brick domes covered huge monuments. Stress-resistant ties and chains were made of iron or wood.
• New building materials developed in the 19th century and a better understanding of the pressure within structures in the 20th century opened up new possibilities.
• Thinner domes were possible with iron and steel beams, steel cables, and prestressed concrete. Modern brick domes can be almost 800 times thicker than older ones. 
• Reduced dome weight allowed for greater spans and large moving domes over stadiums.

Shapes and Elements of Domes

• A dome descends and expands. Meridional forces (like longitude lines on a globe) are compressive and rise towards the base, while hoop forces (like latitude lines) are in compression at the top and tension at the base, with the changeover in a hemispherical dome occurring at 51.8 degrees from the top.
• Chains or external buttressing can counterbalance outward thrusts in a hemispherical masonry dome’s lower half, but meridional cracking is usual. Small or tall domes with less horizontal thrust have thicker drums.
• Each dome level is self-supporting, unlike voussoir arches. A masonry dome’s shallow upper crown is always compressed and laterally supported, so it collapses as a unit.
• Stable deviations from the ideal exist. Having lateral support allows voussoir domes to be thinner than arches. Equilateral domes are even thinner than hemispherical domes.
• The best design for a brick dome is equal thickness which eliminates strain and bending. A funicular surface is the ideal dome geometry for a specific material, like a two-dimensional catenary curve. 
• Adding weight to a pointed dome, like the Florence Cathedral cupola, modifies its optimum form. Gothic domes’ pointed profiles are closer to the ideal dome shape than hemispheres, which Roman and Byzantine architects favored.
• According to E. Baldwin Smith, the dome-shaped tomb was a permanent duplicate of the ancestral, god-given shelter. 
• This led to domical mortuary practices from India’s stupas to Iberia’s tholos burials. Hellenistic and Roman cemeteries had domical tholos symbols.
• Ancient Persia and Hellenistic-Roman civilizations associated domes and tent canopies with paradise. A square dome symbolized geometry. It represented perfection, eternity, and heaven. 
• A square represents Earth. An octagon is between the two. Imitating Alexander the Great, Roman rulers adopted the celestial or cosmic tent symbolism from Achaemenid and Indian royal audience tents as the imperial baldachin. Dome topped Nero’s “Golden House.”
• Early Christians used domes in architecture and the ciborium to cover relics or the church altar. Celestial iconography dominated the dome during the Christian era. The dome symbolized kingship in early Islam.
• A dome over a mosque’s mihrab underlined a prince’s role in royal celebrations. Over time, these domes became decorations or prayer spaces. 
• Dome-shaped mausoleums can indicate royal patronage or respect and pride, not a burial function. Islamic domes were dynastic, religious, social, and practical.

Types of Domes

• Beehive: Horizontal levels make up a corbelled or fake dome. Each layer cantilevers toward the center as it rises, for example, the Mycenaean Treasury of Atreus.
• Braced dome: Braced domes include ribbed, Schwedler, three-way grid, lamella, and geodesic domes.
• Surface member configurations are different. Lightweight braced domes can span 150m. Their parts can lie on the dome’s revolving surface or be straight lengths with surface connections. Single-layer structures are frames or skeletons; double-layer structures are trusses used for large spans. Stressed skin is structural. Bending sheets create the formed surface.
• Cloister vault: These are lso known as polygonal domes, coved domes, gored domes, segmental domes (for saucer domes), paneled vaults, and pavilion vaults. 
• Compound dome: It has pendentives that support a smaller diameter dome, as in Hagia Sophia, or a drum and dome, resulting in greater height.
• Cross-arch dome: The 10th-century Great Mosque of Córdoba has the first ribbed vaults. Off-center dome ribs create a polygonal center. Designs often feature octagons. Structural or decorative arches exist.
• Elliptical dome: A rotational semi-ellipse generates an ellipsoidal dome. ellipsoidal domes have circular bases and horizontal parts, making them a sort of “circular dome.”
• Geodesic dome: Polyhedron-shaped formed from triangles. Geodesic constructions use icosahedrons, octahedrons, and tetrahedrons. Simple parts and couplings allow these domes to resolve internal forces quickly. Size improves efficiency. Buckminster Fuller patented geodesic domes in the U.S.
• Hemispherical dome: A vertically-rotated semicircle forms the hemispherical dome. 
• Hemispherical domes have circular bases and horizontal parts, making them a type of “circular dome.” Horizontally, they only experience compression over 51.8 degrees.
• Below this limit, hemispherical domes need buttressing. Assyrians recognized the shape, Greek mathematicians defined it, and Roman architects standardized it.
• Onion dome: Onion domes are pointy and ogee-shaped. Near East, Middle East, Persia, and India have them. Their impact on northern Russian architecture predates the Tatar takeover.
• In the 15th century, Egyptian and Syrian minaret finials inspired their popularity in the Low Countries of Northern Europe. Way back in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were popular in the Netherlands and Germany.
• German dome: Russia and Eastern Europe influenced German domes. European architecture is wood-heavy. Kazan Church and Brighton Pavilion are examples. In Islamic construction, they are generally made of stone, not wood, with the broad, heavy bulging section intended to support against spreading domes.
• Oval layout or profile dome: Egg (ovum) in Latin. In Asia Minor, around 4000 BC, oval domes covered corbelled stone buildings. Circular arcs with tangents defined the geometry. 
• Oval Roman domes were rare. The St. Gereon Church in Cologne has Roman foundations. The Spanish church Santo Tomás de las Ollas has an oval dome. Rectangular churches have oval domes.
• Renaissance and Baroque churches were oval. Francesco Gallo built the largest elliptical dome at the Sanctuary of Vicoforte in Italy.
• Combining circles created dome-shaped ellipses.
• Domes in the 16th- and 17th-centuries were oval and elliptical. The Chapel of the Junterones in Murcia Cathedral has a semicircular long axis where the short semicircular axis forms a melon dome.
• Parabola dome: A paraboloid dome is formed by a rotating parabola. Paraboloid domes are circular because a curve rotates around a vertical axis. Radially and horizontally, paraboloid domes compress.
• Pendentive dome: This kind consists of pendentives that, instead of touching to make a circular foundation for a drum or complex dome, smoothly continue their curvature to form the dome itself.
• Sail dome: Sail domes are hemisphere shaped and should not be confused with elliptic parabolic vaults. Sail vaults of various types have a range of thrust conditions around their edges. Llotja de la Seda is covered by a series of sail vaults.
• Saucer dome: Half-circle segmental domes are also called calottes. This design is used for many huge domes. Because they’re in compression, masonry saucer domes can be thinner. Increased horizontal force at their abutments and decreased weight and materials may make them cheaper, but they’re more vulnerable to support movement.
• Umbrella dome: These domes are separated at the base into curving pieces that follow the height. “Fluted” refers to this exterior pattern in Mamluk Egypt. St. Peter’s Basilica’s dome uses it.

Examples of building architectures with domes

• The Pantheon is an ancient temple devoted to the Roman gods that symbolized the Roman Empire’s greatness. It is assumed that it was constructed in 27 BCE by Marcus Agrippa. This historic wonder can be seen in the Piazza Della Rotonda in Rome, Italy.
• A central eye in its dome allows for an excellent view of the sky. Additionally, this made it possible for the sun to shine inside and circle the intricately polished Greek artist-crafted coffered ceiling.
• A mosque and significant historical and cultural landmark in Istanbul, Turkey, is the Hagia Sophia, formally known as the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque. The cathedral was a Greek Orthodox church before the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in 1453. 
• It served as a mosque until becoming a museum in 1935.
• The Hagia Sophia’s reputation on a global scale is largely attributable to its dome. The Hagia Sophia dome serves as the centerpiece of the cathedral. It is sandwiched between two half-domes with diameters that add up to the same as the dome. 
• The dome is 55,6 meters tall and 31,24 meters in circumference. It is constructed from brick and mortar. 

Domes Worksheets

This fantastic bundle includes everything you need to know about Domes across 33 in-depth pages. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about Domes, which are architectural structures that resemble a circular roof or ceiling, often forming a semi-spherical shape. Typically built to cover a large, open area and provide support to the structure below, domes can be found in a variety of building types, including churches, temples, government buildings, and even sports stadiums.

Complete List of Included Worksheets

Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.

• Domes Facts
• Words Connect
• Type Selected
• Dome Elements
• What’s the Answer?
• Time Table
• The Art of Architecture
• Research Time 
• Your own Dome Style
• Dome of Hagia Sophia 
• Kirigami Dome

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the purpose of a dome?

The primary purpose of a dome is to provide an architectural feature that covers a large, open area and protects it from the elements. Domes can also offer an aesthetically pleasing focal point for a building and add a sense of grandeur to the structure. Additionally, domes can control light and acoustics within a space.

What materials are used to build domes?

Domes can be constructed from various materials, including stone, brick, concrete, steel, and glass. The choice of material depends on factors such as the size and location of the dome and the intended use of the building. For example, a dome made of concrete and steel might be used in constructing a sports stadium, while a dome made of stone might be used in building a cathedral.

How are domes constructed?

The construction of a dome typically involves a series of steps, including laying a foundation, constructing a support structure, and applying the dome itself. The support structure can be made of steel or reinforced concrete and is designed to provide stability to the dome. The dome is then applied to the support structure using mortar or other materials, often in sections.

What is the largest dome in the world?

The largest dome in the world is the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, Italy. This dome was built in the 2nd century AD with a diameter of 43.3 meters (142 feet). The dome of the Pantheon is considered one of the most outstanding architectural achievements of ancient Rome and continues to be an iconic landmark.

What are some famous domes?

Some of the most famous domes in the world include the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, Italy; the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England; the Taj Mahal in Agra, India; and the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Each of these domes is a unique architectural masterpiece and has become an iconic symbol of the city or country in which it is located.

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