Set the royal buildings on a raised terrace; climb it by broad double stairs with very low, deep steps, and line their parapets with reliefs of the procession that climbs them.
steps of the Great Stairway ≈ 10 cm high
Rules · Cities · Site · Geometry
The paradise: a walled garden in straight rows
Wall the royal garden, water it by channels, and plant its trees at equal distances in straight rows, so that every line and angle is regular.
The Old Persian word for a walled enclosure, pairidaeza, came into Greek as paradeisos and so into our languages as paradise. Xenophon tells how Cyrus the Younger showed his garden at Sardis to the Spartan Lysander, who admired the trees planted in straight rows at regular intervals; Cyrus said he had measured and arranged it himself. At Pasargadae the excavated royal garden has stone water channels in a rectangle, the ancestor of the fourfold garden of Islam (The fourfold garden).
Related rules
Throw an arch diagonally across each upper corner of the square, backed by a small conch or cone; the four squinches and the four walls between them make an octagon, on which a round dome can sit.
octagon side = S (√2 − 1) ≈ 0.414 S; squinch span = octagon side
Raise the royal seat on a new terrace cut from the mountain and built out over the plain, walled as a fortress, and make it secure, beautiful and fitting.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The paradise: a walled garden in straight rows”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/paradise-garden. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.