Editing Hall (section)

{{short description|Large room used for meetings, social affairs or events}}
{{about|the meeting room|the corridor|Hallway|the etymology of "hall"|Hall (concept)|other uses}}
{{redirect|Meeting Hall|the building in Utah|Meeting Hall (Beaver, Utah)}}

[[File:Great Mosque of Kairouan prayer hall.jpg|thumb|Prayer hall of the [[Mosque of Uqba|Great Mosque of Kairouan]], in [[Kairouan]], [[Tunisia]]]]
In [[architecture]], a '''hall''' is a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls.<ref>Oxford English Dictionary</ref> In the [[Iron Age]] and the [[Early Middle Ages]] in [[northern Europe]], a [[mead hall]] was where a lord and his retainers ate and also slept. Later in the [[Middle Ages]], the [[great hall]] was the largest room in castles and large houses, and where the servants usually slept.  As more complex house plans developed, the hall remained a large room for dancing and large feasts, often still with servants sleeping there. It was usually immediately inside the main door.  In modern British houses, an entrance hall next to the front door remains an indispensable feature, even if it is essentially merely a corridor.

Today, the (entrance) hall of a house is the space next to the front door or [[vestibule (architecture)|vestibule]] leading to the rooms directly and/or indirectly. Where the hall inside the front door of a house is elongated, it may be called a '''passage''', '''corridor''' (from Spanish ''corredor'' used in [[El Escorial]] and 100 years later in [[Castle Howard]]), or '''hallway'''.