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the entrance of unknown individuals are negotiated by rituals
that involve the control of admission, greeting, or reception,
or endow an entrance with special dignity. For this purpose,
the threshold area is expanded into an > intermediate space.
It may be a security buffer within which border officials, gate-
keepers or doormen either allow or refuse admission accord-
ing to certain rules. During detainment in anterooms during
control procedures and waiting periods, the applicant for ad-
mission submits to rituals that express his or her dependent
status. In other instances, guests are welcomed, are admitted
into reception areas with representative functions for the pur-
pose of greeting rituals, which in the simplest form consist
of a corridor or entrance hall. Among customs associated in
many cases with > ingress and exit are the removal of shoes
or articles of clothing, or rituals of hygiene, with the corre-
sponding requirements for spatial infrastructure. Ceremoni-
ally heightened forms of reception are made possible by ves-
tibules, foyers or reception halls, where a red carpet is rolled
out in welcome, and where guests are met prior to entering
beneath a projecting roof and led into the building. As set-
tings for acts of greeting and ceremonies involving reception
and escorting, prestigious staircases often assume substantial
dimensions.
In many instances, threshold rituals proceed as proces-
sional forms involving entering, exiting or circumambulating
a building. In the type of the antique peripteros or the ba-
silica, for example, such forms of movement are accompanied
on one or both sides by rows of columns, which rhythmicize
(> rhythm) the forward motion of the procession. In such
cases, the architecture suggests a striding motion rather than
a simple walking. With movement on staircases or ramps in
particular, the pacing and speed of the step is influenced by
the respective mode of ascent. The Temple of Hatshepsut in
Deir el-Bahari or the Roman temple complex at Praeneste
embody grandiose scenarios of ascending processional move-
ments on ramp complexes.