The present essay tries to conceive the reasons why the courtyard and especially the inner one, is so important to the composition of a building in the Mediterranean area.
Through a brief historical overview, architectural examples from the area are presented in order to emphasize the birth of the courtyard and then its extended use in the architecture of the region.
The critique continues in the era of ideologies which put aside the importance of the courtyard for several years. This idea seems to form architecture nowadays.
Defending the importance of the courtyard, i present the main reasons which support its use, emphasising in the advantages of the mediterranean area concerning its climate, and the courtyard's architectural scale within the building.
However architecture tries to manage the relation between physical and metaphysical and as a result only a scientific approach can not give a certain answer concerning its big acceptance. As trying to examine the reasons why, we analyse the elements that the courtyard consistutes of, and we examine them concerning man as a sacred being , searching the sanctity of the court.
By separating it from the Sacred, its position to religion is presented , conceptually but also litterally.
Finally, as consequence we conclude in what the court has to offer and which is its meaning in architecture