This bridge is also historically significant as it is the world's oldest open-spandrel stone segmental arch bridge.

Its arch, which was constructed from over of stone blocks in just 18 days, is the second largest stone arch in the world, surpassed only by the Friedensbrücke ( Syratalviadukt ) in Plauen, and the largest railroad stone arch.

The wall behind the stone was a temporary addition to support the arch above it, which had been weakened after the damage in the 1808 fire ; the wall blocks the view of the rotunda, sits on top of the graves of four 12th century kings, and is no longer structurally necessary.

By analogy, stone arches are irreducibly complex — if you remove any stone the arch will collapse — yet we build them easily enough, one stone at a time, by building over centering that is removed afterward.

* Keystone ( architecture ), the stone at the apex of an arch that holds the arch in place

The endnotes in Drexler's book explain the qualification " almost ": " For example, a delicate structure might be designed that, like a stone arch, would self-destruct unless all its pieces were already in place.

These larger bridges were built with stone and had the arch as its basic structure ( see arch bridge ).

The stone arch came into extensive use in the ancient Roman period and in variant forms could be used to span spaces up to 140 feet ( 43 m ) across.

* Triple Bridge, a stone arch bridge in Ljubljana, Slovenia

" Other stone formations include " Ulysses ' Bow " ( a natural arch ) and the " Grotta del Papa " ( a cave accessible by sea and boasting Neolithic cave paintings ).

* The Chinese Zhaozhou Bridge is completed under the Sui Dynasty, the earliest known fully stone open-spandrel segmental arch bridge in the world.

Over the chancel arch is a cruciform stone bellcote.

It was excavated by Spiegelthal in 1854, who found that it covered a large vault of finely cut marble blocks approached by a flat-roofed passage of the same stone from the south.

It contains the Dutch royal family's burial vault, which between funerals is sealed with a 5000 kg cover stone.

A Gaulish man and a Gaulish woman and a Greek man and a Greek woman were buried alive under the Forum Boarium ... They were lowered into a stone vault, which had on a previous occasion also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings.

The stone marking the sealed vault is to the immediate left of the altar below which it lies.

The internal columns of the arcade with their attached shafts, the ribs of the vault and the flying buttresses, with their associated vertical buttresses jutting at right-angles to the building, created a stone skeleton.

After a pointed lawsuit with Henry Hucks Gibbs, first Baron Aldenham over who should direct the restoration, Grimthorpe had the vault remade and reproportioned in stone, made the floor in black and white marble ( 1893 ), and had new Victorian arcading and sculpture put below the canopy work.

The cellar below is of the same date and is the best preserved medieval cellar in Oxford ; originally entered by stone steps from the street, it has a stone vault divided into four sections by two diagonal ribs, with carved corbels.

For the central tower they designed an inner rotating scaffold, surrounded by timber centring to support the masonry vault of the Central Lobby, that spans 57 feet 2 inches, and an external timber tower, a portable steam engine was used to lift stone and brick to the upper parts of the tower.

The chambers were built as corbelled vaults, with layers of stone placed closer together as the vault tapers toward the top of the tomb.

The presbytery's high vault was executed in stone with bosses decorated in red and white paint and gold leaf, traces of which were still visible when several of the bosses were found in the 19th century.

It has a sixteen sided outer shell with an iron skeleton that rises 96 meters high, and an inner shell star vault supported on sixteen stone pillars.

In architecture, a crypt ( from the Latin crypta and the Greek κρύπτη, kryptē ; meaning concealed, private ) is a stone chamber or vault beneath the floor of a burial vault possibly containing sarcophagi, coffins or relics.

In more modern terms, a crypt is most often a stone chambered burial vault used to store the deceased.

The monastery's location was marked by a small monument on top of the isle in 1801 built by Sir John Slade, 1st Baronet of the Slade Baronets, on the site of a stone vault.

The ceiling, which had been a stone fan ribbed vault like the ceiling of the college gatehouse, was replaced by the painted wooden ceiling still in place today.

A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone piece at the apex of a masonry vault or arch, which is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allowing the arch to bear weight.

Although fully fledged flying buttresses only developed in the Gothic period, their precursors can be found in Byzantine architecture and in some Romanesque buildings, such as Durham Cathedral, where quadrant arches were used to carry the lateral thrust of the stone vault over the aisles.

The DGMEN-Direcção-Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais ( Directorate-General of Buildings and National Monuments ), the forerunner of the IGESPAR first intervened on the site in 1939, through the construction of the chemin de ronde in masonry, including reinforced concrete ; desmantlement and reconstruction of the corner of the keep ; repair and consolidation of the battlements, including the demolition of the tower's allure, reconstruction of a brick vault under the existing ; and reconstruction of the pavement in small stone.

The characteristics of the classic bastle house are extremely thick stone walls ( about 1 metre thick ), with the ground floor devoted to stable space for the most valuable animals, and usually a stone vault between it and the first floor.

The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others.

Delphine stood like stone, her eyes alive with hate as she looked down at the sheeted corpse.

Opposite every gate was a hitching post or a stone carriage-step, set with a rusty iron ring for tying a horse.

Behind him lay the Low Countries, where men were still completing the cathedrals that a later Florentine would describe as `` a malediction of little tabernacles, one on top of the other, with so many pyramids and spires and leaves that it is a wonder they stand up at all, for they look as though they were made of paper instead of stone or marble '' ; ;

He had lived for almost thirty years in this same stone farmhouse with the same wife, a remarkably childish thing in itself ; ;

Just before reaching it I came to a grey and brown stone building that looks somewhat like an Oriental pagoda, with Arabic lettering in gold and colored tile decorations -- the Fountain of Sultan Ahmet.

Perhaps one bored holes in the stone with some kind of an electric gadget.

In it was a stone Tibetan Buddha I had picked up in Bombay, and occasionally, to make merit, my wife and I garlanded it with flowers or laid a few pennies in its lap.

The open ceiling, with allegorical and classical figures thrown in masses against the sky: the closed frieze, formally divided into historical scenes and tightly tied to the stone walls, belong in their large ordering to the line of Correggio and his Baroque followers.

Maybe an entire scene comes into consciousness, with action and motion, or a static view: `` a house under a pine tree, with a little stone path going up to the door ''.

His hands were swinging at his sides, and he passed through the dingy market place with his back straight and, pivoting on his heel, he entered an old stone building.

Then, without knowing why, she found herself running from them, fleeing wildly through the trees, dodging her own shadows until she came to a little hollow in the rocky ground with a big stone in the center behind which she knelt and hid, listening to the madness of her heart and wanting for once to cry.

He left the pool and climbed the steep stone stairs to the temple, and the sense of familiarity with the place would not leave him.

The connection with Dorians and their initiation festival apellai is reinforced by the month Apellaios in northwest Greek calendars, but it can explain only the Doric type of the name, which is connected with the Ancient Macedonian word " pella " ( Pella ), stone.

Today, abaci are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal.

The ground floor, in particular, is rather astonishing with tracery, irregular oval windows and flowing sculpted stone work.

In front of the large windows, as if they were pillars that support the complex stone structure, there are six fine columns that seem to simulate the bones of a limb, with an apparent central articulation ; in fact, this is a floral decoration.

The ancient Greeks used baskets of stones, large sacks filled with sand, and wooden logs filled with lead, which, according to Apollonius Rhodius and Stephen of Byzantium, were formed of stone ; and Athenaeus states that they were sometimes made of wood.

Although the titan Rhea does present Dionysus with an amethyst stone to preserve the wine-drinker's sanity in historical text.

The Vienna amber factories, which use pale amber to manufacture pipes and other smoking tools, turn it on a lathe and polish it with whitening and water or with rotten stone and oil.

Ajax at first gets the better of the encounter, wounding Hector with his spear and knocking him down with a large stone, but Hector fights on until the heralds, acting at the direction of Zeus, call a draw: the action ends without a winner and with the two combatants exchanging gifts, Ajax giving Hector a purple sash and Hector giving Ajax a sharp sword.