Mole (architecture)

Not to be confused with Seawall or Breakwater (structure).
This article is about a type of coastal structure. For the building in Turin, see Mole Antonelliana. For other uses, see Mole (disambiguation).

A mole is a massive structure, usually of stone, used as a pier, breakwater, or causeway separating two bodies of water. A mole may have a wooden structure built on top, resembling a wooden pier. However, the defining feature of a mole is that water cannot freely flow underneath it, unlike a true pier. The oldest known mole is at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor complex on the Red Sea, constructed c. 2500 BCE.

The word comes from Middle French mole, ultimately from Latin mōlēs, referring to a large mass, especially of rock. The words molecule and mole (the unit of measurement in chemistry) have the same root.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.