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Lantern (2)

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in Italian or modern architecture, a small structure on the top of a dome, or in other similar situations, for the purpose of admitting light, promoting ventilation, or for ornament. In Gothic architecture the term is sometimes applied to louvres on the roofs of halls, etc., but it usually signifies a tower which has the whole height, or a considerable portion of the interior, open to view from the ground, and is lighted by an upper tier of windows: lantern-towers of this kind are common over the center of cross churches. The same name is also given to the light open erections often placed on the tops of towers; these sometimes have spires rising from them, but in such cases they are less perforated with windows. Lanternes des Morts occur only in the church-yards on the Continent, they were simply pillars, with a place for a light on the top similar to small light-houses, and it is not improbable that something of the kind was adopted in the early Roman cemeteries, and so has given origin to some of the Irish round towers, which may well have been used, at least in some instances, for this purpose.