Book Description

Late Antique palaces and palace culture is a definitive analysis of dramatic shifts in architecture and design, and embodies urban planning, public works and patronage in the Imperial cities of Rome and Constantinople, and the first palatine centres of the Holy Roman Empire. Written with a view to the new historiographies, this volume provides a wealth of detailed information of, and perspectives on, Late Antique and Early Mediaeval design practices, with emphasis on the new spatial configurations and their decorative schema. This volume is an edited book of essays which provide groundbreaking narratives on palatine architecture and culture in this period, integrating cross-cultural dialogues from Rome as centre of imperial palace architecture with detail of late palace embellishments and ceremonial usage to the fore, as the discussion shifts to the new imperial capital of Nova Roma, Constantinople, and thence to the Carolingian centres via Rome and Ravenna. A developing parallel discussion emerges, where prototypes for palaces and ceremonial courts were imported and reinterpreted through a process of citation. Principal interest resides in the contrasts of palatial and residential complexes presented to demonstrate new ceremonies and the practices enacted within and through them. The volume then moves focus on to eastern and western provincial and rural high status residences and landscapes of power, and examines the relationships between palaces and late Roman villas and the court and court culture, revealing a political agenda in use in the language of architecture. This will then be transposed onto early medieval architecture over the passage of time.