Potala Palace

“ It is made of a composition of metals, gold and silver predominating. Priests are always in attendance and lamps are constantly burning before it. The roof of the temple is gilded and the interior is richly furnished.
Situated in the suburbs, on a rocky elevation above the plain which overlooks the city, is a wonderful group of buildings forming the Potala, or palace of the Dalai Lama. This huge, conglomerate structure of granite rising story above story to an immense height fascinates the beholder, who marvels at the skill and patience of the builders. ”

“ To judge from its remains, Potemkin's palace appears to have been one of truly royal magnificence; on each side are still standing wings which must have contained a great number of apartments. There is a profusion of colonnades, porticoes, capitals, and beautiful cornices in the Italian style of the period; but all is at the mercy of the first peasant who wants stones or wood to repair his cabin. The ground is all strewed over with shapeless fragments, blocks of stone, and broken shafts. ”

“ Nevertheless there are Faults in the Building which are shocking to such as have the least Skill in Architecture; insomuch that they who have a Taste for that Science are sorry that a Building which has been so expensive has been no better conducted. The Situation of this Palace is indeed very fine, at the end of the City, and of a very noble large Street, which like all the rest runs in a strait Line. The Palace, which has a great Square329 before it, consists of a large number of Lodging-Rooms, with a great high Pavilion in the middle, and two advanc'd Wings, with ample Pavilions at the ends ”

“ It is curious to reflect that, twenty years after the Princess Royal first took up her residence there, an English visitor was to write: “Without Carlyle’s Frederick the Great, Potsdam would be a collection of mere dead walls enclosing a number of costly objects. Illuminated by the book, each room, each garden wall thrills with human interest.” But when the Princess Royal first went there to make the New Palace her home for a part of each year, it might much more truly have been described as an arid and dusty waste, and that though it was surrounded by many waters. ”

“ Inside, the rooms are large and lofty, and the stairs of greyish marble or even wood; but neither in doors or out are there any fine statues or sculptures.
The Palace of the governor is as I before said, a magnificent building—one that would be an ornament to the finest city in the world. It is built in the form of a horse-shoe, with a handsome cupola in the centre: the portico, as well as both the wings, is supported upon columns. The internal arrangements are as bad as can possibly be imagined; the supper-room being, for instance, a story higher than the ball-room. ”

“ At this time, which is devoted to Mirth, there is a Ball at Court, and on the Flesh-days there is commonly a great Masquerade representing a Country-Wedding. In the Palace there is a very magnificent Theatre, which indeed is almost the only thing there that is worth seeing, for the Imperial Palace is so wretched a Mansion that few Monarchs are lodged worse than the Emperor. ”

“ Beyond Andohálo, proceeding south, we rise to the highest part of the city-hill: and here in a cluster stand the Queen’s Palace and many houses of the Prime Minister and the chief nobles of the country. The Great Palace is growing a more conspicuous object than ever; owing to the verandah of stone pillars by which Mr. Cameron is now strengthening it. When finished it will be a handsome building: but it has been a heavy tax upon the people’s 144energies. The Queen’s residence is a smaller palace of wood just behind. ”

“ The Inside too is perfectly answerable to the Outside: The Rooms are very small, the Tapistries and Paintings very rich, but the Spaniards are so negligent, that they suffer the Rats to gnaw the fine Hangings, and take no Care to repair them: There are noble Pictures also in another Room of this same Palace, which represent the principal Actions of the Duke of Feria, several of which Pictures, more is the Pity, have been cut into Quarters to enlarge the Entry of the Room. ”

“ The Elector's Palace is higher than the City, and situate in such a manner that there's a Prospect from the great Apartments quite through the Opening between the Mountains, by which the Necker runs into the Plain. The Palace is built of Free-Stone, and is a magnificent Structure. The greatest part of it was burnt by the French when they destroy'd the Palatinate: The Lodging-Rooms that are subsisting are very substantial, tho' not built in the modern Taste. The Apartments are large, but want Ornament, especially since they have been stript of their Furniture. ”

“ Ferida Palace, the residence of His Royal Highness the Duke of Lotzen, on the Alta Avenue half a mile or so beyond the Epsau, is a great, rambling pile of gray stone, of varying height and diverse architecture, set in the midst of grounds that occupy two entire squares, and are surrounded by a high, embattled wall, pierced with four wide entrances, whose bronze gates are famous in their craftsmanship. ”

“ Buontalenti, that most ingenious of men, painter, sculptor and architect, transformed the great courtyard of the Pitti palace into an amphitheatre covered in with scarlet cloth, and erected a castle on the side next the garden, while in the middle stood a stockade containing fireworks. On the firing of a cannon a triumphal car appeared, in which sat a magician who performed tricks of sleight of hand, and told fortunes to those who desired. ”

“ The name of fortress would be more appropriate than any other, for the Old Palace; it is a great mass of stone, without columns, without frontal, without order of architecture. Time has gilded the walls with beautiful vermilion tints which the pure blue of the sky sets off marvelously, and the whole structure has that haughty and romantic aspect which accords well with the idea that one forms for oneself of that old Palace of the Seigneurie, the witness, since the date of its erection in the thirteenth century, of so many intrigues, tumults, violent acts, and crimes. ”

“ The Imperial Palace is large, but has nothing else scarce to boast of, for the Apartments are low, dark, and without Ornaments, and the Furniture is very ancient, tho’ scarce any Princes have a finer Treasure in Tapistry; and why ’tis not us’d, I can’t imagine: The Apartments of the Empress Dowager were the only ones fit to lodge in ”

“ He entered large halls where the carpets were of silk, the lounges and sofas covered with tapestry from Mecca, and the hangings of the most beautiful Indian stuffs of gold and silver. Then he found himself in a splendid room, with a fountain supported by golden lions. The water out of the lions' mouths turned into diamonds and pearls, and the leaping water almost touched a most beautifully-painted dome. The palace was surrounded on three sides by magnificent gardens, little lakes, and woods. Birds sang in the trees, which were netted over to keep them always there. ”

“ The weather was warm, too. A few minutes walk, guided by our obliging cicerone, Mr. Wyllie, carried us to the Palace.
It is a large, square-built villa, spaciously piazzaed and windowed, surrounded by pretty plantations of shrubbery and fruit-trees. At the gateway a guard of Kanaka infantry presented arms, the royal standard was unfurled from the flag-staff and floated to the breeze. Passing up a broad, gravelled alley, we ascended a flight of steps to the piazza, and were again saluted by a double line of officers, who were supposed to be the black rods in waiting. ”

“ It is equally a mark of good breeding in you not to accept it; so we merely bowed our acknowledgments of the courtesy of the Governor 80 in offering us a royal palace. We were mistaken, however. The Governor was in earnest. "You will find a rambling set of empty, unfurnished rooms," said he; "but Tia Antonia, who has charge of the palace, may be able to put them in some kind of order, and to take care of you while you are there. If you can make any arrangement with her for your accommodation, and are content with scanty fare in a royal abode, the palace of King Chico is at your service." ”

“ So all that portion of the ancient building, which had been used for the personal accommodation of the Princess, was thrown down; and its materials contributed towards the erection of a new palace, at the extremity of the city, near to the fortress Ravaldino, and connected with it by one of the gateways of the town. The pleasures and splendour, which the tastes of the new age demanded, were thus admirably made compatible with the old time provision for security, which could by no means yet be dispensed with. For material was advancing more rapidly than moral civilisation. ”

“ The palace of legend is let out in miserable tenements to muleteers and peasants, who little heed the damage done to wrought Arabian wall and ceiling by their smoky lamps, wood fires in unventilated chambers, by beasts and meal-bags housed in a princess’s boudoir, in a dismantled reception chamber. The Empress Eugenie may receive a few pesetas quarterly for this desecration, and we lose a few hours of inestimable musing, while the entire world is the poorer by a dainty monument the less. Even thirty years ago the palace of Galiana was still a constructable dream. ”

“ The moon, a little past the full, had come up from the east, and swung, like a great, yellow lantern, above the dark outlines of the palace roof. The world shone softly in the mellow light. The night air from the hills was cold; but the earth was sweet. Fidá loitered near a doorway, wrapped in his cloak. The great courtyard was empty save for the two motionless soldiers that guarded its entrance. Apparently not another soul was abroad in the palace to-night. Fidá moved languidly across and looked into the temple room of Vishnu. Darkness and silence here. The gods also slept. ”

“ In the middle you shall build me a large hall with a dome, its four walls of massy gold and silver, each side having six windows, whose lattices, all except one, which is to be left unfinished, must be set with diamonds and rubies. There must be stables and horses and grooms and slaves; go and see about it!"
The palace was finished by next day, and the genie carried him there and showed him all his orders faithfully carried out, even to the laying of a velvet carpet from Aladdin's palace to the Sultan's. ”

“ But he set about the Repair of every thing; and in short, in a few Years, not only caused the old Houses to be rebuilt, but likewise erected a great many new ones, and built a Palace, which makes a grand Appearance, and would have been one of the most considerable Structures in Germany, if it had been brought to Perfection. The main Body of it, which is quite finish’d, has spacious Apartments, laid out with Art, richly adorn’d, and nobly furnish’d. The Tapestry with which the Chapel is hung upon grand Festivals, is worth seeing. ”

“ No doubt, as you look at the old man, there will rise up before you visions of the Delhi Palace, where once he lorded it, in a sort of way, and played his part. You see the red battlemented walls, and that vast quadrangle; that glorious Amm-i-khass, so perfect in its proportions, so faultless in its taste; those fairy-like apartments which, if their beautifully inlaid walls could speak, would have dismal tales to tell of every vice that has degraded man, and every misery that has wrung the heart of woman ”

“ The Pitti Palace is of course a collection of masterpieces; they jostle each other in their splendour, they perhaps even, in their merciless multitude, rather fatigue our admiration. The Uffizi is almost as fine a show, and together with that long serpentine artery which crosses the Arno and connects them, making you ask yourself, whichever way you take it, what goal can be grand enough to crown such a journey, they form the great central treasure-chamber of the town. ”

“ Though they are in reality minute, they grow in the owners' minds to veritable parks or virgin forests. Some of the so-called Imperial palaces around Nikko are most humble abodes, surrounded by a little strip of land. Katsura-no-Rikyu Palace, for instance, consists simply of a few planks nailed together, forming a kind of log house of one storey, a few feet square, and divided in the interior by partitions or the so-called sliding screens. Certainly it is no palace; it can scarcely be called a house. It is literally a shed roofed with bamboo and thatch,—nothing more. ”

“ In every structure, the base is commonly broad; the monument diminishes in thickness as it encroaches on the sky. The Ducal Palace is the exact opposite of that natural scheme of architecture: the base, pierced by light porticoes surmounted by a gallery of arabesques indented with four-leaved open trefoils, supports an almost bare square mass: one would say it was a fortress built upon pillars, or rather an inverted building planted on its light coping with its thick root in the air. ”

“ Open doors afford glimpses of squalid interiors, crowded with slatternly women and dirty children, the hereditary retainers and hangers-on of this effete and moribund royalty. Private troupes of dancing bedayas, gamelon players, actors, pipe, fan, and betel-box bearers, pertain to the tumbledown Palace, and the patriarchal system of ancient Java permits the presence of whole families belonging to these indispensable ministers of the royal pleasure. ”

“ However that might be, there were no watchmen out on the night when Richard de Podelicote stood in the silent Cloisters and glanced hurriedly around before he forced open the lock of the Refectory door and proceeded to the job in hand. This was to fill his bag with silver cups from the aumbries or cupboards in the Refectory. Nobody disturbed him; he retreated as he had entered; he climbed up his rope; he replaced his ladder along the wall as if it had been left there by a workman, and he passed through the postern into the Palace itself. ”