rotunda
n. countablen. a large, round room with a dome on top. You often find these in big buildings like museums or government offices.
n. a large, circular room or hall, typically crowned by a dome. Often used in the context of public or institutional architecture.
The museum's rotunda is decorated with beautiful marble.
Visitors gather in the central rotunda to admire the massive chandelier hanging from the glass ceiling.
The architect designed the library's rotunda to serve as a grand entrance, ensuring that the circular space would provide a sense of scale and importance to the building's visitors.
Learned borrowing from Latin rotunda, from rotundus (“round”). In the architectural sense, from Sancta Maria Rotunda (the name for a church in the Pantheon).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Last updated May 26, 2026