History of Architecture 1 Report by: Padilla IV DLS -College of St. Benilde School of Architecture 1st Term S.Y. 2016-17 September 2016

1. NICANOR FELIPE E. PADILLA IV
Persian Architecture

2. Architectural Achievements
 Recognized in buildings of 8th-7th
century B.C., before the reign of Cyrus
the Great
Excavation was found in western Iran at:
Godin Tepe
Baba Jan
Nushi Jan

3. Godin Tepe

4. Godin Tepe
 Original citadel comprised a fortified manor
(minor palace)
 Centered around a larger and a small columned hall
 Additional smaller rooms and rows of magazines
 Protected by a fortification wall with bastions, a tower and
arrow slots

5. Baba Jan
 Presented a formidable façade
 8 rectangular towers as part of the defense
 The space within the wall comprised
 A rectangular court within a long room on either side

6. Tepe Nushi–i-Jan

7. Tepe Nushi–I-Jan
 Near Hamadan (Ecbatana), well-preserved mud-
brick buildings of Median have been uncovered in
Level I (700-500 B.C.)
 Listed structures include:
 A fire altar
 Unusual mural decorations, suggesting long experience in the use
of mudbricks
 Fort
 Ramp leading to the staircase; turning round a central pier and a
roof with a mudbrick corbel vault

8.  Persian palaces and tombs’ columnar architecture
were derived from older civilizations
 Gorge molding, from Egypt
 Sculptured monsters, relief-carved orthostats and polychrome
glazed brickwork, from Mesopotamia
 Style of masonry, indirectly from Uratu

9. Site of Pasargadae
 Comprises of four
structures scattered
over a plain, centred
round:
 The citadel
 Rusticated masonry is a
great feature of the
platform of the citadel
 The residential palace
 The sacred precinct
 Tomb of Cyrus

10. Tomb of Cyrus
 A simple box-like
monument of limestone
3.2m x 2.3m (10ft.6in. X
7ft.6in.)
 Gabled stone and standing
on a six-step platform
 Achaemenian in its use
of large stones
 Accurately cut, smoothly
dressed, reinforced by
swallowtail clamps of iron
and lead

11. Tomb of Cyrus
 Design:
 Paralleled in the southern
Zagros highlands by the
tomb of Gur-i-Dokhtar
 Has possible antecedents in
the underground tombs
with gabled roofs in
Luristan and in central Iran
at Tepe Sialk, near Kashan

12. Susa

13. Susa
 Ancient city of Elam
 Became the Persian capital in succession to Babylon with
the building of a citadel and palace complex by Darius I
(522-486 BC)
 Resources and skills of the empire were utilized in the
construction of the palace buildings
 Cedar from Lebanon
 Teak from the Zagros mountains and Southern Persia
 Bricks made by the Babylonian method
 Craftsmen from Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Ionia
 Famous glazed-brick decorations found in this palace
and a later one by Artaxerxes II (404-358 BC)
 portraying processions of archers, lions, bulls or dragons

14. Palace of Persepolis
•Begun in 518 BC by Darius,
mostly executed by Xerxes I (486-
465 BC) and finished by
Artaxerxes I about 460 BC)
•The buildings stood on a platform
in a well-laid local stone bound
with iron clamps, about 460m x
275m (150ft x 900ft) in extent and
rising 15m (50ft)
•Stairway to terrace (6.7 mm
wide)
•Gatehouse of Xerxes
•Mudbrick walls, faced
with polychrone bricks,
and front and rear
portals; guarded by stone
bulls

15. Palace of Persepolis
 Apadana of Darius I
 A grand audience hall, 76.2m
(250ft) square and with 36 columns
within its (20ft) thick walls
 Begun by Darius, completed by his
successors
 Palace of Darius
 Might have been finished in
Darius’s lifetime
 Triphylon
 Acted as a reception chamber and
guardsroom
 Treasury
 Double-walled administrative and
storehouse building with columned
halls of different sizes and a single
doorway

16. Palace of Persepolis
 Xerxes’s Palace
 Near the South West angle,
connected with an L-shaped
building, identified as the harem
 Harem
 Women’s quarters
 Hall of the Hundred Columns
 Finished by Artaxerxes I
 A throne hall, 68.6m (225ft)
square with columns 11.3m (37ft)
high, supporting a flat cedar roof
 All sides, except North, are
double-walled, and have two
doorways
 All were framed in stone
surrounds in the 3.4m (11ft) thick
brick wall

17. Palace of Persepolis
 Wonderful architectural sculptures
 Monumental stairs were lined with reliefs
where they are arranged in; separated by
bands of rosettes
 Nobles, courtiers, tribute-bearers and
guardsmen advanced in dignified
processions, and traditional subjects filled
with awkward angles of the stairways and
the deep jamps of the doorways
 Stepped battlements crowned the parapat
walls
 Columns of the lesser apartments had
wooden shafts
 Thickly plastered and heavily decorated
 Columns of the Halls were stone
throughout

18. Palace of Persepolis
 The sculptures have their a
character of their own…
 Molded bases
 Flutes shafts
 Curious, complex capitals that
support the roof beams
 Vertical, Ionic-like volutes
 Twin bulls and dragons

19. Tomb of Darius
 13km (8 miles) north of Persepolis
 One of the four rock-hewn
sepulchres of the great Achaemenian
kings
 The façade
 18.3 m (60ft) wide
 Appears to reproduce the south front of
Darius’s palace at Persepolis
 4 collumns of the double-bull type
 Central doorway with Egyptian-like cornice
 Upper compartment in which an elaborate
throne, 2.7m (9ft) high, is supported by two
rows of figures, above which the king stands

20. Tomb of Darius
 Fire Temple
 Stands near the tomb of Darius
 A stone square tower containing a
single room, approached by an
outside stairway

21. Sources:
 Blundell, Jones, Cruickshank, Dan, Frampton, Kenneth, Richards,
Fleur, & Saints, Andrew (Eds.). (1996). Sir Banister Fletcher’s A
History of Architecture (2oth ed.). United Kingdoms: Architectural
Press.
 http://www.beer-studies.com/uploads/media_items/Godin_tepe-site-
Nissen-1988.original.jpg
 http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads/files/Palace_Architecture/palac
earchitect_fig_1.jpg
 http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads/files/Archeology/v2f3a041_f2_
300.jpg
 http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads/files/Pasargadae/pasargadae_fi
g_6.jpg
 http://www.historvius.com/images/original/503-Pasargadae-E.jpg
 https://s3.amazonaws.com/classconnection/214/flashcards/6349214/j
pg/palace_of_persepolis-14981206C5702CFA89E.jpg

22. Sources (cont.):
 http://www.messagetoeagle.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/11/unescosusa1.jpg
 https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/610/flashcards/899610/jp
g/hall_of_hundred_columns1320531480146.jpg
 http://www.livius.org/site/assets/files/2724/thumbnail_buspar_gur-
e_dokhtar_northwest.jpg
 http://0.tqn.com/d/ancienthistory/1/S/O/Q/3/Naqsh-e-Rustam_1.jpg
 https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a9/55/08/a955082aa7998967d87b5aa4658789
e1.jpg
 http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads/files/Persepolis/persepolis_fig
_4b.jpg
 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Darius_I_to
mb_sections.JPG
 http://www.farschto.ir/images/shiraz/naksh3g.jpg