Palace
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The Hôtel de Ville, in which the short-lived peace of 1602 was signed between England and France, was built by Henry IV. The Corn-Hall , the College, and the Palace once inhabited by this monarch, but now converted into ordinary dwelling-houses, should be noticed."--The Stranger's Guide to Paris (1837) by J. Steward "ON either bank of the Nile ancient Egypt accumulated temples, palaces, and tombs, the vastness of whose ruins proves that a mighty civilisation existed upon the earth at a time when the Persians and Greeks herded their flocks on the shore of the Caspian Sea. "--Wonders of Architecture "The proof of this is at Versailles, at the Crystal Palace in great part , in the old gardens in Vienna, at Caserta, near Naples, where there is a far from beautiful stone garden ..."--The English Flower Garden (1895) by William Robinson |
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A palace is a grand residence where aristocrats usually live. Other possible inhabitants include the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking public figure. In many parts of Europe, the term is also applied to relatively large urban buildings built as the private mansions of the aristocracy. Many historic palaces are now put to other uses such as parliaments, museums, hotels or office buildings. The word is also sometimes used to describe a lavish public building which was never a residence; this use may be intended to convey that the building is a "people's palace", where a sort of civic consciousness resides.
Etymology
The word palace comes from Old French palais (imperial residence), from Latin Palātium, the name of one of the seven hills of Rome. The original "palaces" on the Palatine Hill were the seat of the imperial power while the "capitol" on the Capitoline Hill was the religious nucleus of Rome. Long after the city grew to the seven hills the Palatine remained a desirable residential area. 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. His descendants, especially Nero with his "Domus Aurea" (the Golden House), enlarged the building and its grounds over and over until it took up the hill top. The word Palātium came to mean the residence of the emperor rather than the neighbourhood on top of the hill.
Palace meaning "government" can be recognized in a remark of Paul the Deacon, writing c. AD 790 and describing events of the 660s: "When Grimuald set out for Beneventum, he entrusted his palace to Lupus" (Historia Langobardorum, V.xvii). At the same time, Charlemagne was consciously reviving the Roman expression in his "palace" at Aachen, of which only his chapel remains. In the 9th century, the "palace" indicated the housing of the government too, and the constantly travelling Charlemagne built fourteen. 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; it continued to be used as the seat of government in some German cities. In the Holy Roman Empire the powerful independent Electors came to be housed in palaces (Paläste). This has been used as evidence that power was widely distributed in the Empire; as in more centralized monarchies, only the monarch's residence would be a palace.
In modern times, the term has been applied by archaeologists and historians to large structures that housed combined ruler, court and bureaucracy in "palace cultures". In informal usage, the term "palace" can be extended to a grand residence of any kind.
See also
