sacellum

A sacellum is a small shrine in ancient Roman religious contexts. The word is a diminutive of sacrum (neuter of sacer, "belonging to a god"). The numerous sacella of ancient Rome included both shrines maintained on private properties by families, and public ones. A sacellum might be square or round.

Varro and Verrius Flaccus describe sacella in ways that at first seem contradictory, the former defining a sacellum in its entirety as equivalent to a cella, which is specifically an enclosed space, and the latter insisting that a sacellum had no roof. "Enclosure", however, is the shared characteristic, roofed over or not. "The sacellum", notes Jörg Rüpke, "was both less complex and less elaborately defined than a temple proper".