PORCH, a covered place of entrance to a building and differentiated from its principal mass. Its forms are various, sometimes extend ing above by more than one story, sometimes enclosed save for the doorway, then again open to the outside on three sides, with its outer corners supported by columns or piers. It may be simplified into an overhanging hood or baldachino. In Byzantine and Eastern churches the porch was an enclosed atrium or narthex, a feature that has developed with modifications into the mosque of the Moslems. The enclosed atrium was retained in the early basilican churches and contained a fountain where wor shippers might wash their hands,— the origin of the present universal Roman Catholic practice of dipping the fingers in the holy water of the piscina. In this space, probably always called the narthex of the basilica, the penitent or un baptized persons were compelled to stay. Such a structure may be seen in the church of San Lorenzo, in Rome, and Saint Apollinaire in Clusse at Ravenna. The narthex extended
across the front of the church and its inner wall contained three doors that gave upon the nave and aisles of the main body. Of Ro manesque churches, the porch of the church of Vezelay is an important example; while the church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris shows a Gothic edifice with a porch extending across the front, dating from 1431, its horizon tal crown in sharp contrast to the climbing lines of the main edifice.
Porches are characteristic of the Gothic style in Italy, though instead of being placed in front they often occupy positions on the flanks, thus forming side entrances. A remarkable speci men in three stories, the upper and surmount ing one of a pagoda-like structures attached M to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo.