PORTICO. - The classic type of the portico, developed in Greco-Roman art, presents itself as a rectangular building, elongated, open on one of the long sides, closed on the other, which could be leaned against another building, with the shorter sides closed or open according to uses, which were extremely varied.
Rome had its porticoes in various zones of the city ("porticus absidata," "Aemilia," "Argonautarum," "Boniventus," "Constantini," "Deorum Consentium," "Europae," "Gallieni," "Gordiani," "Liviae," "Margaritoria," "Maximae," "Mirucia," "Octaviae," "Pompei," "Severi," "Triumphi," "Vipsania," etc.). Later the popes, to facilitate access to the sanctuaries of the martyrs, built porticoes that allowed one to go under cover from the sun and rain, from the Tiber to the basilica of St. Peter and from this to St. Paul's and from the Porta Tiburtina to St. Lawrence in the Agro Verano (Lib. Pont., I, pp. 396, 401, 507; II, pp. 3, 9, 12, 76, 145, 147, 153, 161). Some open-air cemeteries had porticoes under which sarcophagi or "formae" in the pavement were arranged. They were later erected in front of the cemetery churches, for burials. In the portico onto which the entrances to the basilica of St. Peter opened, the popes were buried beginning with Leo I (d. 461), and this portico later took the name porticus pontificum (Lib. Pont., I, p. clv). The porticoes of the churches were included in the right of asylum issued by the law of 431 (Cod. Theodos., IX, 45,4).
Enrico Josi
After the numerous examples of the Byzantine period in Ravenna, the portico disappears almost entirely in the succeeding ages, in relation to a reduction of architectural forms to the necessary minimum, observable in the buildings of the early
Middle Ages. In the Romanesque period the presence of the portico, otherwise quite rare, is generally related to classicizing aspirations, present especially in the regions facing the Tyrrhenian, such as Tuscany and Latium (portico of the cathedral of Lucca and of the cathedral of Civita Castellana). The portico also appears in buildings, such as the church of S. Angelo in Formis, that hark back to the harmonious and simple schemes of the Early Christian basilicas. The Abruzzo portico of S. Clemente di Casauria also recalls a classicizing clarity. The so-called closed porticoes, which precede the French Gothic churches, are divided internally by columns on which a complex system of vaults is set. Cistercian architecture presents some examples of porticoes, in the abbey of Casamari and in the abbey of Fossanova, where, however, only a few traces remain to testify to the presence of the portico. In the communal palaces the portico begins to acquire an independence of its own, and there are the first examples of architectural organisms standing on their own, called "logge."
In the Renaissance the portico adapts well to the new spatial conceptions. Brunelleschi gives the most personal example of it in the Pazzi Chapel. The porticoes of Bramante (canonica of S. Ambrogio and S. Maria di Abbiategrasso), in the vastness of the central arch and in the pictorial contrasts of the structural elements, announce the dynamic tendencies of sixteenth-century architecture. In the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline, Michelangelo would give a new function and autonomy to the portico, whose scenographic possibilities Bernini would fully understand, encircling St. Peter's Square with it. In S. Maria della Pace, Pietro da Cortona adapts the portico to the curvilinear course of the whole structure. The type of facade with portico is then common in the seventeenth century, both in remodeled basilicas, whose medieval atrium was preserved, and in entirely new constructions (S. Maria in Via Lata, S. Maria dei Miracoli).
In the Neoclassical period the portico appears quite commonly, especially as an entrance to the numerous rotundas.