portico

What it means

1. A porch, or a small space with a roof supported by columns, serving as the entrance to a building.

   The amphitheatre hath two portici as that at Niſmes.

   1732, [Awnsham Churchill; John Churchill], A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Some Now First Printed from Original Manuscripts, Others Now First Published in English. […], volume VI, London: […] Messʳˢ Churchill, for John Walthoe, […]; Tho. Wotton, […], page 723, column 2

   5 more examples

   The great house itself was a large, white, wooden building, with wings on three sides of it. In front, a large portico, extending the entire length of the building, and supported by a long range of columns, gave to the whole establishment an air of solemn grandeur.

   1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 3, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC

   The long-closed G.W.R. station alongside has a decidedly derelict-looking frontage, with eight gargoyles or figureheads still clinging to the portico.

   1952 February, R. A. H. Weight, “A Railway Recorder in Wessex”, in Railway Magazine, page 131

   […] Porticus Milliaria (portico of the thousand paces) which was the longest, if not the most attractive, of the many portici of ancient Rome.

   1971, Carlo Galassi Paluzzi, Roman Churches, Italian State Tourist Office, page 44, column 1

   The portici enhance street life today, as they did when they were first constructed, not simply by providing protection from sun and rain, but by providing attractive public spaces for friends to meet, for business people to conduct business, for vendors to display their wares, for musicians to play their music and for beggars to beg. […] Most tours of Bologna begin in the Piazza Maggiore, on the site of the Roman forum, but it’s important to remember that the piazza didn’t begin to take its present shape till toward the end of the 13th century—after the age of medieval towers, after the citizens began to enjoy their portici.

   1996 November 10, Robert Hellenga, “Bologna through medieval eyes”, in The New York Times Magazine, pages 40–42

   These lines are possibly meant to represent two portici flanking the building on its long sides.

   2016, Roger S. Bagnall, Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Akın Ersoy, Cumhur Tanrıver, editors, Graffiti from the Basilica in the Agora of Smyrna, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and New York University Press, →ISBN, page 433

In a sentence

The amphitheatre hath two portici as that at Niſmes.

1732, [Awnsham Churchill; John Churchill], A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Some Now First Printed from Original Manuscripts, Others Now First Published in English. […], volume VI, London: […] Messʳˢ Churchill, for John Walthoe, […]; Tho. Wotton, […], page 723, column 2

Where it comes from

1. Latinporticus“porch”
2. Italianportico
3. Englishportico

From Italian portico, from Latin porticus (“porch”), from porta (“gate”). Doublet of porch, portego, and porticus.