Giant order

[2] Roman architectural historian Mark Wilson Jones also cites the columns at the Basilica of Pompeii, the Baths of Diocletian, and the Temple of Baachus at Baalbek as early examples of the giant order.

[3] To an extent buildings with giant orders resemble a Roman temple adapted for post-classical use,[4] as many were (the survivors have now usually been stripped of later filling-in).

One of the earliest uses of this feature in the Renaissance was at the Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua, designed by Leon Battista Alberti and begun in 1472; this adapted the Roman triumphal arch to a church facade.

[5] It was further developed by Michelangelo at the Palaces on the Capitoline Hill in Rome (1564–1568), where he combined giant pilasters of Corinthian order with small Ionic columns that framed the windows of the upper story and flanked the loggia openings below.

It continued to be used in Beaux-Arts architecture of 1880–1920 as, for example, in New York City's James A. Farley Building, which claims the largest giant order Corinthian colonnade in the world.