Roof lantern

The lantern over the dome of the Florence Baptistery, dated to 1150^[1]

The 6th-century Hagia Sophia's upper dome acts as a roof lantern

A roof lantern is a daylighting architectural element. Architectural lanterns are part of a larger roof and provide natural light into the space or room below. In contemporary use it is an architectural skylight structure.

A lantern roof will generally mean just the roof of a lantern structure in the West, but has a special meaning in Indian architecture (mostly Buddhist, and stretching into Central Asia and eastern China), where it means a dome-like roof raised by sets of four straight beams placed above each other, "arranged in diminishing squares", and rotated with each set. Normally such a "lantern" is enclosed and provides no light at all.^[2]

The term roof top lantern is sometimes used to describe the lamps on roofs of taxis in Japan, designed to reflect the cultural heritage of Japanese paper lanterns.

^ Horn, Walter. "Romanesque Churches in Florence: A Study in Their Chronology and Stylistic Development". The Art Bulletin. Vol. 25, No. 2 (Jun., 1943), pp. 112-131.
^ Rowland, Benjamin, The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, 1967 (3rd edn.), pp. 173, 194, Pelican History of Art, Penguin, ISBN 0140561021

[1] Horn, Walter. "Romanesque Churches in Florence: A Study in Their Chronology and Stylistic Development". The Art Bulletin. Vol. 25, No. 2 (Jun., 1943), pp. 112-131.

[2] Rowland, Benjamin, The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, 1967 (3rd edn.), pp. 173, 194, Pelican History of Art, Penguin, ISBN 0140561021

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