Palace

It is also used for some large official buildings that have never had a residential function; for example in French-speaking countries Palais de Justice is the usual name of important courthouses.

Roman emperor Caesar Augustus lived there in a purposely modest house only set apart from his neighbours by the two laurel trees planted to flank the front door as a sign of triumph granted by the Senate.

In the early Middle Ages, the palas was usually that part of an imperial palace (or Kaiserpfalz) that housed the Great Hall, where affairs of state were conducted; continued to be used as the seat of government in some German cities.

[citation needed] In modern times, archaeologists and historians have applied the term to large structures that housed combined rulers, courts, and bureaucracy in "palace cultures".

The Domus Aurea was a different palace, begun by Nero, where excavations from the Renaissance onwards have discovered remarkably well-preserved paintings in levels now below ground.

[citation needed] Diocletian's Palace in Split, Croatia was ready for occupation in 305 AD and is much the most significant ancient survival, having been turned in the Middle Ages into a fortified town; it still houses many people and businesses.

[5] Before its destruction during the Third Anglo-Ashanti War, the Ashanti royal palace at Kumasi, Ghana was described by English explorers Thomas Edward Bowdich and Winwood Reade as "an immense building of a variety of oblong courts and regular squares.

"[6] European palaces belonging to rulers were often large and grand, however, very few have survived to represent anything like their original medieval condition; many having been abandoned, burned down, demolished, or rebuilt.

It stands in Canada's capital on a 36-hectare (89-acre) estate at 1 Sussex Drive, with the main building consisting of approximately 175 rooms across 9,500 m2 (102,000 sq ft), and 27 outbuildings around the grounds.

While the equivalent structure in many countries has a prominent, central place in the national capital, Rideau Hall's site is relatively unobtrusive within Ottawa, giving it more of the character of a private home.

Amongst these temples is one, the principal one, whose great size and magnificence no human tongue could describe,... All around this wall are exquisite quarters with huge rooms and corridors.

The National Palace, or Palacio Nacional, located in Mexico City's main square, the Plaza de la Constitución (El Zócalo), first built in 1563, is in the heart of the Mexican capital.

The palace features many objets d'art ranging from gifts of Napoleon III to paintings by Franz Xaver Winterhalter and Mexican painter Santiago Rebull.

During the period of the Artaxiad dynasty of Armenia, emperor king Tigranes the great constructed a grand persianate palace in the newly built city of Tigranocerta.

The first capital of the khanate was the Bayat Castle, built in 1748 Haji Gayib's Palace is an ancient fortress construction near a coastal side of Icheri Sheher.

The exterior was decorated with dark blue, turquoise and ochre tiles in geometric patterns and the murals were coloured with tempera and were inspired by the works of Nizami Ganjavi.

Chinese palaces are designed in regular square grids and arranged in a formal layout consisting of main buildings and a number of pavilions enclosed within walls.

They feature floats of flowers in grand fountains, shimmering blue water of magnificent baths and private pools, doric pillars, ornamental brackets, decorative staircases, and light streaming in through large windows.

[33] Although Indonesia is now a republic, some of its parts and provinces still retain and preserve their traditional royal heritage, for example the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Mangkunegaran princedom, Kasepuhan palace in Cirebon, and Kutai in East Kalimantan.

[33] The layout of traditional Balinese and Javanese kratons is similar to the Chinese concept of walled compounds of royal pavilions, squares and gardens.

The main Niavaran Palace, completed in 1968, was the primary residence of the last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the imperial family, until the Iranian Revolution.

Herod's palace at Caesarea Maritima preserved its palatial function as the official residence of the Roman procurators and governors of In Judaea.

In 2004, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo converted the former Aduana (customs house) in Cebu City into a small palace, called Malacañang sa Sugbo.

It combined aspects of the typical Asian form of a group of pavilions set in a large walled garden (part is now Gülhane Park) with the European style of a single massive building with courtyards.

This is in a bridge which connects the house to the adjacent Church of Our Lady, Bruges, so that members of the household could see the high altar from wide windows in the room.

Also called "Keizershof" (English; literally "Emperor's Court") because several royal children resided here and received education at this court, including Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria, King of Spain and Duke of Burgundy) "Hof van Savoye" or "Palace of Margaret of Austria", early 16th-century building and one of the first Renaissance buildings in northern Europe.

The hôtel particulier remains the term for an urban residence sited entre cour et jardin, behind a forecourt and opening onto a garden; when fronting directly on streets, they are maisons, "houses".

Only the urban residencies of the higher aristocracy were called palota (palace); rural stately homes were named kastély (mansion), or in case of smaller country houses, kúria.

After the arrival of the Order of Saint John in 1530, the knights settled in Birgu, where part of Fort St Angelo was used as a palace for the Grand Master.

Other palatial architects in Poland at the time were Chrystian Piotr Aigner, Szymon Bogumił Zug, Domenico Merlini and Johann Christian Schuch.