Satrap's Great Palace

Varying in style, but not in purpose, palaces of local governors, satraps and royalty were power made manifest in stone. Whether based on earlier Persian designs, such as the administrative buildings and the royal palace complex at Persepolis at the heart of the Achaemenid Empire, or constructed in Hellenistic fashion by Alexander’s successors, such as the Seleucid palaces at Antioch, these buildings were design to awe. The palaces were also hives of activity, from which the day-to-day running of the cities and provinces was orchestrated, and diplomacy, politics and wars were planned.