The main, open plaza in the center of the Roman city, around which were built some of the main public buildings.

A structure with three adjacent long parallel rooms and a fourth perpendicular room - a typical building plan in Iron-Age Palestine.

A Catholic monastic order of Italian origin, named after its founder St. Francis of Assisi. In the fourteenth century the pope appointed the Franciscans to serve as custodians (or guardians) of the holy places in the Holy Land.

Italian for ‘fresh. A painting done on a wall or ceiling when the underlying layer of plaster was still damp, so that the brightness of the colors is well preserved.

Part of the roofing of a building, above the architrave. The frieze was sometimes decorated with human and animal figures carved in relief; hence the Greek name zooforos, ‘bearer of animals’.