Cella in the context of "Parthenon Frieze"

The statue of Athena Parthenos (Ancient Greek: Παρθένος Ἀθηνᾶ, lit. 'Athena the Virgin') was a monumental chryselephantine sculpture of the goddess Athena. Attributed to Phidias and dated to the mid-fifth century BCE, it was an offering from the city of Athens to Athena, its tutelary deity. The naos of the Parthenon on the acropolis of Athens was designed exclusively to accommodate it.

Many artists and craftsmen worked on the realization of the sculpture, which was probably built around a core of cypress wood, and then paneled with gold and ivory plates. At about 13 meters high, the statue reflected the established aesthetic canon of the severe style (clothing) while adopting the innovations of the high classical (leg position). She was helmeted and held a large round shield and spear, placed on the ground to her left, next to her sacred snake. Clothes, jewellery, accessories, and even the statue base were decorated, mainly with the snake and gorgon motif.

The Temple of Vesta, or the aedes (Latin Aedes Vestae; Italian: Tempio di Vesta), was an ancient edifice in Rome, Italy. It is located in the Roman Forum near the Regia and the House of the Vestal Virgins. The Temple of Vesta housed Vesta's holy fire, which was a symbol of Rome's safety and prosperity. The temple has a circular footprint, making it a tholos.

Since the worship of Vesta began in private homes, the architecture seems to pay homage to the architecture of early Roman homes. The temple's current, ruinous form employs elements of Greek architecture with Corinthian columns and marble. The sacred hearth was housed in a central cella. The surviving structure indicates that there were twenty Corinthian columns built on a podium fifteen meters in diameter. The roof probably had a vent at the apex to allow smoke to escape.

Proserpina (/proʊˈsɜːrpɪnə/ proh-SUR-pih-nə; Latin: [proːˈsɛrpɪna]) or Proserpine (/ˈprɒsərpaɪn/ PROSS-ər-pyne) is an ancient Roman goddess whose iconography, functions and myths are virtually identical to those of the Greek Persephone. Proserpina replaced or was combined with the ancient Roman fertility goddess Libera, whose principal cult was housed in a temple atop Rome's Aventine Hill, which she shared with the grain-goddess Ceres and the wine god Liber (Liber Pater).

Each of these three deities occupied their own cella at the temple, their cults served or supervised by a male public priesthood. Ceres was by far the senior of the three, one of the Dii Consentes, Rome's approximate equivalent to the Greek Twelve Olympians, Ceres being identified with the Greek Demeter and Liber with Dionysus. Libera is sometimes described as a female version of Liber Pater, concerned with female fertility. Otherwise she is given no clear identity or mythology by Roman sources, and no Greek equivalent. Nothing is known of her native iconography: her name translates as a feminine form of Liber, "the free one". Proserpina's name is a Latinization of "Persephone", perhaps influenced by the Latin proserpere ("to emerge, to creep forth"), with reference to the growing of grain.

The Round Church (Bulgarian: Кръгла църква, Kragla tsarkva), also known as the Golden Church (Златна църква, Zlatna tsarkva) or the Church of St John (църква "Свети Йоан", tsarkva "Sveti Yoan"), is a large partially preserved early medieval Eastern Orthodox church. It lies in Preslav, the former capital of the First Bulgarian Empire, today a town in northeastern Bulgaria. The church dates to the early 10th century, the time of Tsar Simeon I's rule, and was unearthed and first archaeologically examined in 1927–1928.

Considered to be one of the most impressive examples of medieval Bulgarian architecture, the Round Church takes its name from the distinctive shape of one of its three sections, the cella (naos), which is a rotunda that serves as a place of liturgy. The church's design also includes a wide atrium and a rectangular entrance area, or narthex, marked by two circular turrets.

Ancient Roman temples were among the most important buildings in Roman culture, and some of the richest buildings in Roman architecture, though only a few survive in any sort of complete state. Today they remain "the most obvious symbol of Roman architecture". Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion, and all towns of any importance had at least one main temple, as well as smaller shrines. The main room (cella) housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, and often a table for supplementary offerings or libations and a small altar for incense. Behind the cella was a room, or rooms, used by temple attendants for storage of equipment and offerings. The ordinary worshiper rarely entered the cella, and most public ceremonies were performed outside of the cella where the sacrificial altar was located, on the portico, with a crowd gathered in the temple precinct.

The most common architectural plan had a rectangular temple raised on a high podium, with a clear front with a portico at the top of steps, and a triangular pediment above columns. The sides and rear of the building had much less architectural emphasis, and typically no entrances. There were also circular plans, generally with columns all round, and outside Italy there were many compromises with traditional local styles. The Roman form of temple developed initially from Etruscan temples, themselves influenced by the Greeks, with subsequent heavy direct influence from Greece.

In Classical architecture, a peripteros (Ancient Greek: περίπτερος; see peripterous) is a type of ancient Greek or Roman temple surrounded by a portico with columns. It is surrounded by a colonnade (pteron) on all four sides of the cella (naos), creating a four-sided arcade, or peristyle (peristasis). By extension, it also means simply the perimeter of a building (typically a classical temple), when that perimeter is made up of columns. The term is frequently used of buildings in the Doric order.

A monopteros (Ancient Greek: ὁ μονόπτερος, from: μόνος, 'only, single, alone', and τὸ πτερόν, 'wing'), also called a monopteron or cyclostyle, is a circular colonnade supporting a roof but without any walls. Unlike a tholos (in its wider sense as a circular building), it does not have walls making a cella or room inside. In Greek and especially Roman antiquity, the term could also be used for a tholos. In ancient times, monopteroi (Ancient Greek: οἱ μονόπτεροι) served among other things as a form of baldachin for a cult image. An example of this is the Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, albeit with the spaces between the columns being walled in, even in ancient times. The Temple of Roma and Augustus on the Athenian Acropolis is a monopteros from Roman times, with open spaces between the columns.

Monopteroi were popular garden features in English- and French-style gardens, often given classical names such as "muses' temple". Many wells in parks and spa centres are covered by a monopteros. Many monopteroi have staffage structures like a porticus placed in front of the monopteros. These also have only a decorative function, because they are not needed in order to provide an entrance to a temple that is open on all sides.