triforium, triforium-gallery. In larger Romanesque and Gothic churches, an upper aisle with its own arcade forming an important part of the elevation of a nave interior above the nave-arcade and below the clerestorey. Gervase (fl. late C12), in his account of Canterbury Cathedral, used ‘triforium’ to mean the clerestorey-gallery or any upper passage or thoroughfare, and his usage does not in any way indicate ‘three openings’, as those at Canterbury were two or four, so the term does not seem to apply to the arcade through which the triforium-gallery is visible from the nave. Probably the most accurate way of describing the arcade would be triforium-arcade, or arcade opening to the triforium-gallery.

Bibliography

F. Bond (1913);
W. Papworth (1892);
Sturgis et al. (1901–2)

triforium a gallery or arcade above the arches of the nave, choir, and transepts of a church. The Anglo-Latin term is found first in the chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury, c.1185, and originally referred only to Canterbury Cathedral; it was mentioned by Viollet-le-Duc in his Dictionnaire d'Architecture (1868) as having been introduced into architectural nomenclature by the English archaeologists, and from the 19th century was extended as a general term. The origin of the word is unknown.

tri·fo·ri·um / trīˈfôrēəm/ • n. (pl. -for·i·a / -ˈfôrēə/ ) a gallery or arcade above the arches of the nave, choir, and transepts of a church.

triforium (archit.) gallery in the wall over the arches at the sides of nave and choir. — AL. (XII; taken up by antiquaries XVIII); of unkn. orig.