clerestory, in architecture, any fenestrated (windowed) wall of a room that is carried higher than the surrounding roofs to light the interior space. In a large building, where interior walls are far from the structure’s exterior walls, this method of lighting otherwise enclosed, windowless spaces became a necessity. One of the earliest uses of the clerestory was in the huge hypostyle hall of King Seti I and Ramses II at the Temple of Amon (1349–1197 bc, Karnak, Egypt), in which the central range of columns, higher than those on either side, permitted clerestories to be built of pierced stone slabs.
In Roman architecture many great halls were lighted with clerestories. Usually, groined vaults over the central hall allowed large semicircular windows to be built above the side roofs, as in the tepidarium of the Baths of Diocletian (3rd century ad) and the Basilica of Constantine (ad 310–320), both in Rome. This device was used in Byzantine and Early Christian architecture, as exemplified by the clerestory walls under the side arches of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (532–563).
The clerestory became most highly developed and widely used in the Romanesque and Gothic periods. The Chartres cathedral (1194), for example, has pairs of lancet clerestory windows that are almost as wide as the aisle windows.