Frieze is a horizontal sculpted or painted band running along the upper part of a wall or building, often telling a continuous story.
A frieze is a continuous horizontal band of decoration, sculpted or painted, typically running along the upper section of a wall or the entablature of a classical building. In Greek temple architecture the frieze sits between the architrave and the cornice and could be either continuous (Ionic order) or broken into alternating triglyphs and metopes (Doric order). The Parthenon frieze (c. 442–438 BCE), running around the entire cella of the temple atop the Acropolis, depicts the Panathenaic procession — horsemen, sacrificial animals, magistrates — in 160 metres of marble relief. About half is in the British Museum (the so-called Elgin Marbles, removed by Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1812, and contested ever since); much of the rest is in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. Friezes appear far beyond Greek architecture: the bas-reliefs spiralling up Trajan's Column in Rome (113 CE) and the carved temple bands of Borobudur in Java (c. 800 CE) are vast narrative friezes in different traditions.