Roman imperial palaces

The word palace comes from the Palatine, the hill in Rome where the emperors, starting with Augustus, built their residences. Before imperial times the hill was mostly occupied by the houses of the rich; after it, palatium came to mean the emperor’s house wherever it stood. At the end of the 3rd century two of the rulers of Diocletian’s Tetrarchy built fortified retirement palaces in the Balkans.

Two of those retirement palaces are in this atlas, and both were built like fortresses. Diocletian’s Palace in Split, begun around 295 six kilometres from his birthplace, Salona, was laid out like a legionary fort with towers on its landward walls; after the 7th century refugees moved inside, and it has been a town ever since, which is why so much of it stands. Felix Romuliana in eastern Serbia, the palace Galerius built and named after his mother Romula, keeps its complete circuit of walls and towers, with the excavated palace, temples and churches inside.