Columnar

The floor of the Madeleine church is high above street level. The building sits on a podium, its roof supported by a Corinthian colonnade that runs around all four sides. I took these photos on the western side of the church, looking both southward and northward.

Looking south toward the front of the building and the rue Royale.

The building's architectural style is, as I've mentioned, neoclassical. But it's more than that. The building is a 19th century replica of the classic greco-roman temple. The podium, the rectangular plan, the columns, the front portico, and the triangular pediment are all elements of the Roman temple style.

Looking north toward the back of the building along the western colonnade.

Examples of this building type survive antiquity. One of the more well-known of them in France is the Maison Carrée in the southern city of Nimes, built in the second century AD. Perhaps the most famous of the ancient temples is the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, completed over 400 years earlier.