sail vault

The spacious interior was topped with a sail vault, from which enormous chandeliers were hung.

Sail vaults support the ceiling, supported by corbels and smaller vaults rising from the columns.

One theory is that the original dome continued the curve of the pendentives, creating a massive sail vault pierced with a ring of windows.

The square bay with an overhead sail vault or dome on pendentives became the basic unit of architecture in the early Byzantine centuries, found in a variety of combinations.

Also called sail vaults, handkerchief domes, pendentive domes, or Byzantine domes, this type can be thought of as pendentives which, rather than merely touching each other to form a circular base for a drum or compound dome, smoothly continue their curvature to form the dome itself.