Caryatid is an architectural support sculpted in the form of a standing female figure, taking the place of a column.
A caryatid (Greek: 'maiden of Karyai') is a sculpted female figure that functions as an architectural support, replacing a column or pier. The most famous example is the Porch of the Maidens on the Erechtheion temple on the Athenian Acropolis (421–406 BCE), where six caryatids support an entablature — the originals are now in the Acropolis Museum and the British Museum (Lord Elgin removed one in 1801), with replicas on the building. The Roman architect Vitruvius, writing in the 1st century BCE, gave the caryatids a political origin story, claiming they represented the women of Karyai, a city allied with the Persian invaders, condemned to bear the architectural weight as punishment — a story most modern scholars consider invented. The motif passed into the Roman, Renaissance, Neoclassical, and modern repertoires. The male equivalent — a column carved as a man — is called an Atlantid, after the mythological Atlas who held up the sky.