Palace

architecture

Palace, royal residence, and sometimes a seat of government or religious

centre. The word is derived from the Palatine Hill in Rome, where the Roman
emperors built their residences. As a building a palace should
be differentiated from a castle, which was originally any fortified dwelling.

After the Middle Ages the ornate homes of the nobility of all ranks in
England, France, and Spain came to be known as palaces (as did the residence
of the exiled popes in Avignon), and eventually the name was applied to a
number of large and imposing buildings, both public and private. In
the United States, for example, there are colonial governor’s palaces located
in Williamsburg, Virginia; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and San Antonio, Texas.
Because of its colonial connotations the name Presidential Palace was rejected
in favour of Executive Mansion for the White House. Also, France has the
Élysée Palace and so-called Palaces of Justice.

Palaces, because of the power of the patron and the money and labour
available for their construction, often represented the epitome (or in some
cases, extreme examples) of the architectural and social values of
the culture and age in which they were built. For this reason, they are of prime
interest to archaeologists.