PURPOSE: To provide a cooling zone of a continuous furnace and a method for cooling the same in which the entire furnace chamber can be uniformly cooled.

CONSTITUTION: A partition wall 6 is provided inside the furnace wall 1 of a cooling zone and a ceiling wall 2 to form a gas circulating space 7. A suction unit 8 is provided at the ceiling of the space 7, the gas in the furnace is sucked from a furnace chamber 10, and discharged into the space 7. The gas in the furnace circulated in the space 7 is mixed with the atmosphere introduced from external gas introducing means 11, and blown from the circulating gas outlet 12 of the lower part of the furnace into the chamber 10.