Cella

The cella was typically a simple, windowless, rectangular room with a door or open entrance at the front behind a colonnaded portico facade.

With very few exceptions, Greek buildings were of a peripteral design that placed the cella in the center of the plan, such as the Parthenon and the Temple of Apollo at Paestum.

[citation needed] The Temple of Venus and Roma built by Hadrian in Rome had two cellae arranged back-to-back enclosed by a single outer peristyle.

This is an entirely new setup with respect to the other types of constructions found in Etruria and the Tyrrhenian side of Italy, which have one cell with or without columns, as seen in Greece and the Orient.

In the Hellenistic culture of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in ancient Egypt, the cella referred to that which is hidden and unknown inside the inner sanctum of an Egyptian temple, existing in complete darkness, meant to symbolize the state of the universe before the act of creation.