The Island Palace of Antioch
About
A sprawling imperial residence built on Antioch's river island, eventually the main seat of Roman emperors in the East whenever they campaigned against Parthia. The chronicler Malalas credits the emperor Gallienus with starting it in the mid-3rd century CE, with Diocletian finishing the complex decades later. It didn't exist in 117 CE — the island that year held older, more modest residences instead, over a century before this palace was ever planned.
What happened here
The public rooms are enormous and the private ones are not. A visitor is walked through an audience hall built to make him feel small, waits with everyone else, and is admitted in order of usefulness. Behind that front, the household runs on hundreds of slaves and freedmen with narrow specialities — one for the lamps, one for the silver, one who remembers names. The kitchens are far from the dining rooms, so food arrives warm at best. Business never stops: petitions from provincial towns, judicial appeals, dispatches read aloud while the emperor is being shaved. Gardens and fountains take up as much ground as the buildings, because being able to waste that much space in a crowded city is the point.
Sources
Nearby
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →