Dynastic History | The Palace of Ardashir, Firuzabad — Which Part of the Vault Is Third-Century

Two kilometres north of the circular city, beside a spring, Ardashir I built the larger of his two palaces at Firuzabad: a block roughly 104 by 55 metres of local rubble set in mortar and plastered inside, quick and cheap material put to monumental use. A vaulted iwan some eighteen metres high opens onto a line of three square halls, each roofed by a dome resting on squinches — the arches thrown across the corners that turn a square room into a circle a dome can sit on. Robert Byron, who came in February 1934, called the building the prototype of the squinch.

In front is a pool fed by the spring, once edged with tile, with a garden laid out around it. In a dry province, that arrangement is a statement about who holds the water.

Travellers documented the ruin before archaeologists did: Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy published it in 1887. Iran placed the palace on its UNESCO tentative list in 1997, and in 2018 it was inscribed as one of eight components of the Sassanid Archaeological Landscape of Fars Region.

That file is worth reading before looking up at the vault. The main chamber's dome has been partly rebuilt in concrete faced with stone, for structural stability, while the rest of the fabric was consolidated by traditional methods. Not everything standing here is third-century work, and the join is visible once you know to look for it. The spring still fills the pool in front.

📸 Cover: the iwan and domed halls of Ardashir's palace above the spring-fed pool, Атаман Павлюк, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons