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.
Rules · Stairs · Site · Ornament
Raise the palace on a terrace, reached by gentle stairs
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
The terrace of Persepolis is cut and built out from the foot of a mountain, standing high above the plain. Its stairs are famously easy: the steps are so shallow that they could be climbed with dignity in long robes. The Apadana stands on its own higher platform, reached by double stairways whose walls carry the reliefs of delegations from the subject peoples bringing gifts: the procession in stone that accompanied the procession in life.
Related rules
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.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Raise the palace on a terrace, reached by gentle stairs”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/persian-terrace. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.