Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. The clerestory carries the clear glass windows at the top of the picture. The next level down (flood-lit with rounded arches) is the triforium, the lowest level is the nave arcade.

Byzantine-style clerestory of the Monreale cathedral is elaborately covered with glass mosaic work.

Clerestory or ("clear storey"), in architecture, denotes an upper story of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. The Romans also used clerestories in their basilica-like baths and palaces, and probably derived the clerestory from the Hellenistic architecture of the Greeks. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1433x1947, 493 KB) Malmesbury Abbey clerestory level (at the top of the picture with the clear glass windows). ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1433x1947, 493 KB) Malmesbury Abbey clerestory level (at the top of the picture with the clear glass windows). ... Malmesbury Abbey, at Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England, was founded as a Benedictine monastery in c. ... Wiltshire (abbreviated Wilts) is a large southern English county. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location (dark green) within the British Isles Languages None official English de facto Capital None official London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001... Triforium is an architectural term. ... Links to full descriptions of the elements of a Gothic floorplan are also found at the entry Cathedral diagram. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The apse of the cathedral of Monreale Monreale is a small city in the province of Palermo, in Sicily, Italy. ... The Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece Architecture (from Latin, architectura and ultimately from Greek, αρχιτεκτων, a master builder, from αρχι- chief, leader and τεκτων, builder, carpenter) is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. ... St. ... Links to full descriptions of the elements of a Gothic floorplan are also found at the entry Cathedral diagram. ... Romanesque St. ... See also Gothic art. ... Church in Villach, Austria. ... In a modern church an aisle is a row down the middle of the church with a set of pews on each side. ... St. ... The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance...

Sometimes these windows are very small, being mere quatrefoils or spherical triangles. In large buildings, however, they are important objects, both for beauty and utility. The ribbed vaulting of Gothic architecture concentrated the weight and thrust of the roof, freeing more wall-space for larger clerestory fenestration. In Gothic churches, the clerestory is generally divided into bays by the vaulting shafts that continue the same tall columns that form the arcade separating the aisles from the nave. In architecture, a vault is an arched structure of masonry, forming a ceiling or canopy. ... A Bay is a module in classical or Gothic architecture, the distance between two supports of a vault or the unit of an opening and its framing on a façade. ...

Under the clerestory and above the arcade could be inserted an additional story, the triforium that helped dramatically increase the height of a Gothic nave. The triforium consists of a narrow passageway inserted in the wall beneath the windows of the clerestory and above the large gallery over the side aisles. The triforium is open to the nave through its own arcade, often doubling or tripling the number of arches to a bay. Triforium is an architectural term. ...

In English churches, the windows of the clerestories of Norman work, even in large churches, are of less importance than in the later styles. In Early English they became larger; and in the Decorated Gothic they are more important still, being lengthened as the triforium diminishes. In Perpendicular work the latter often disappears altogether, and in many later churches, as at Taunton, and many churches in Norfolk and Suffolk, the clerestories are close ranges of windows. The Nave of Durham Cathedral demonstrates the characteristic round arched style, though use of shallow pointed arches above the nave anticipates the Gothic style. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Triforium is an architectural term. ... Winchester Cathedral Sherborne Abbey The Perpendicular Gothic period (or simply Perpendicular) is the third historical division of English Gothic architecture, and is so-called because it is characterised by an emphasis on vertical lines; it is also known as the Rectilinear style, or Late Gothic. ... Map sources for Taunton at grid reference ST2324 Taunton is the county town of Somerset, England. ... Norfolk (pronounced IPA: ) is a low-lying county in East Anglia in the east of southern England. ... Suffolk (pronounced SUF-fk) is a large traditional and administrative county in the East Anglia region of eastern England. ...

At Hagia Sophia, for instance, the main dome rests on a drum pierced by clerestory lights. Hagia Sophia as it appears today A section of the original architecture of Hagia Sophia Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom), now known as the Ayasofya Museum, is a former Eastern Orthodox church converted to a mosque, now converted into a museum, in the Turkish city of Istanbul. ...

The term "clerestory" is equally applicable to Egyptian temples, where the lighting of the hall of columns was obtained over the stone roofs of the adjoining aisles, through slits pierced in vertical slabs of stone.

In the Minoan palaces of Crete, by contrast, light-wells seem to have been employed instead of clerestories. Fresco of a Minoan fisherman from Akrotiri The Minoans were a pre-Hellenic Bronze Age civilization in Crete in the Aegean Sea, flourishing from approximately 2600 to 1450 BC when their culture was superseded by the Mycenaean culture, which drew upon the Minoans. ... Crete (Greek Κρήτη Kriti; called Candia in the Venetian period and Turkish: Girit) is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. ...

By extension, "clerestory lights" are any rows of windows above eye level that allow light into a space. In modern architecture, clerestories provide light without distractions of a view or compromising privacy and was attacked by monkeys.

See also

• Gothic architecture
• Cathedral architecture