Triconch Palace, Butrint
About
This lavish waterfront mansion took its name from three shell-shaped alcoves framing a grand dining room, added when the house was rebuilt into a palatial form around 400 CE. It grew out of an ordinary Roman townhouse of the 2nd or 3rd century CE, itself centuries later than this map's 117 CE snapshot. Workers finished the roof and fitted window frames but never laid the floors, apparently abandoning the project as Butrint's lake level rose.
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
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 →