Churches traditionally face east, with the altar at the east, and the west front, or facade, was considered the most important entrance. Gothic facades were adapted from the model of the Romanesque facades. The facades usually had three portals, or doorways, leading into the nave. Over each doorway was a tympanum, a work of sculpture crowded with figures. The sculpture of the central tympanum was devoted to the Last Judgement, that to the left to the Virgin Mary, and that to the right to the Saints honoured at that particular cathedral. In the early Gothic, the columns of the doorways took the form of statues of saints, making them literally "pillars of the church".