Coffers

Coffers: A sunken panel in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.A series of these sunken panels were used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also called caissons ('boxes"), or lacunaria ("spaces, openings"), so that a coffered ceiling can be called a lacunar ceiling: the strength of the structure is in the framework of the coffers. The stone coffers of the ancient Greeks and Romans are the earliest surviving examples, but a seventh-century BCE Etruscan chamber tomb in the necropolis of San Giuliano, which is cut in soft tufa-like stone reproduces a ceiling with beams and cross-beams lying on them, with flat panels fillings the lacunae. This type of architectural building gives strength to the building by decreasing the weight of the ceiling. When raining the water is collected at the bottom of the building. This also represents that gods would enter from the top of the building and leave from the bottom of it. Coffering on the ceiling of the Pantheon, Rome.