Light the climax of a Baroque interior (the altar or the dome) from windows the visitor cannot see, so that it seems to glow of itself.
The orangery faces south
Build the orangery as a long room with a solid back wall and tall windows the full height of its front, turned to the south, so that the orange and lemon trees standing in it in their tubs through the winter have all the light and warmth of the low sun.
Oranges and lemons were brought out in their tubs in summer to stand along the walks and terraces, as they had in Italy, and taken in for the winter. The orangery was built for them: one room, as high as it could be, glazed across its south front between piers, with the back wall solid and sometimes warmed by flues or stoves.
Being a room as much as a greenhouse, it was given an architect’s front and stood in sight of the house, often at the end of a walk or on the edge of the garden, and served for suppers and music in summer when the trees were out.
Related rules
Make the stair of a palace a processional space: one broad flight rising to a landing, then turning back in two flights either side to arrive at the principal floor beneath a single great vault.
Light the hall over the front door with a fanlight: a half-round light with bars radiating like the ribs of a fan, or, after 1770, an elliptical one, often with narrow lights at the sides of the door.
Light a high wall with a half-round window divided by two mullions into three lights, the middle wider, as the Romans lit the great halls of the Baths of Diocletian.
Design the furniture of a principal room with the room: the chairs, settees and stools covered in the stuff of the walls or the bed, the tables and glasses drawn to the architecture of the piers and the chimneypiece, so that the room and its furniture are of one manner and one date.
At the end of the apartment of state, in the bedchamber of state, set the state bed: the richest piece in the house, its tester high under the ceiling, its curtains, valances and headcloth of the richest stuff, with the chairs and stools of the room covered to match; it is a bed of honour more than of sleep.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The orangery faces south”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/orangery-to-the-south. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.