BALCONY, a gallery or framework of wood, iron or stone, projecting from the front of a house, generally on a level with the floors of rooms, and supported on cantilevers or brackets, and sometimes on columns of wood or stone. Balconies are often surrounded by iron railings or stone balustrades. The etymol ogy of the word has been frequently traced to the Greekikaleiv,to throw. This rests upon the presumption that balconies were built orig inally for purposes of defense, the enemy being attacked with missiles thrown upon him from the balcony. The Latin word is balcus or pal cus, the Italian balcone, also balco or pa/co, the Turlcish bala-khanch, the German balcon. The use of balconies is comparatively modern, al though there is no doubt about their existence in times of antiquity. Winckelmann, the Ger man art writer, refers to the fact that in Greece every private dwelling-house had contrivances which, although then designated under different terms, would be called balconies in our day.
In Spain, Italy and South America, they are used for sitting, walking and chatting, in warm summer evenings; but they are less common in northern countries, where the nature of the climate does not call for such romantic con trivances. They are, however, often used as miniature gardens for potted plants. Upon Boccaccio and Bandello, the great Italian novelists of the 16th century, the poetical util ity of balconies was not lost, and entertaining bakony scenes abound in their stories. Shakes peare took his plot of Romeo and Juliet from one of Bandello's novels, and the balcony scene exhibits, with that power of genius of which the great English dramatist alone was capable, the beauty of a balcony when two young lovers like Juliet and Romeo make it the scene of their passion.
In modern theatres the term is applied to the first or second gallery or tier of seats above the pit.