Palaces Author:Janice Anderson Palaces are much more than 'great houses' lavishly decorated and sumptuously furnished by the rulers who live in them. When rulers were also law givers, dispensers of justice and great patrons of the arts, their houses were at the centre of the legal, social and cultural life of the states their occupants ruled over. — Palaces de... more »scribes and lavishly illustrates one hundred of the world's finest palaces, although construction methods and changing architectural styles play a big part on the story of palaces. Rather, the book puts palaces in their social and historic context, showing how local customs, traditions and religious beliefs, and the growing power of emperors and kings, rulers and princes dictated the layouts, building styles and the decoration of palaces.
Because Palaces includes only buildings that exist in a form complete enough to give visitors a pretty good idea of what they were like when occupied, by far the greatest numbers of palaces described here come from Europe. The earliest are from the world of Minoans and Myceneans, around the Aegean Sea, followed by the great town houses, or palatia, of the emperors of Rome. The gradual change from the heavily fortified castles needed by rulers in the turbulent Middle Ages to the increasingly luxurious dwellings enjoyed by the kings and princes of the Renaissance and in the Baroque, Rococo and Neo-classical periods that followed is traced here through the stories of palaces throughout Britain and Europe.
From Europe, Palaces turns its attention to the palaces of the Middle East, the Islamic world, India, South-East Asia and China and Japan. There are far fewer palaces in these countries than in Europe, mainly because wood and mud bricks, the materials most often used for early buildings in these regions, do not stand the test of time. the palaces that are here, however, are wonderfully and exotically varied in style, and many of them are richly decorated and furnished. « less