What was Cleopatra's palace really like?

Can you imagine what the palace that served as the residence of Cleopatra, the famous queen who marked the end of the Ptolemies, might have looked like? This is one of the questions that my colleague Miguel Ángel Elvira, professor of art history at the Complutense University, and I asked ourselves during a conference held at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid on the city of Alexandria under the Ptolemies, the dynasty that ruled Egypt from the conquest of Alexander the Great until the Roman invasion of Augustus.

This queen lived in a huge palace, remodelled several times over three centuries, which occupied the coastal area of Alexandria, just opposite the famous lighthouse that marked the entrance to the port: a place that is very difficult to analyse, given the changes that the coastline has undergone in the area of the seafront promenade and the earthquakes that occurred throughout the Middle Ages.

Cleopatra is undoubtedly the most famous queen of Egypt. Her adventures with her two lovers, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, have inspired leading playwrights, novelists and filmmakers. As a result, painters and other artists have been compelled to place her figure in a palace and give her surroundings architectural and decorative forms capable of reflecting the luxury of her existence in an almost legendary Alexandria.

Can you imagine what the palace that served as the residence of Cleopatra, the famous queen who marked the end of the Ptolemies, might have looked like? This is one of the questions that my colleague Miguel Ángel Elvira, professor of art history at the Complutense University, and I asked ourselves during a conference held at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid on the city of Alexandria under the Ptolemies, the dynasty that ruled Egypt from the conquest of Alexander the Great until the Roman invasion of Augustus.

This queen lived in a huge palace, remodelled several times over three centuries, which occupied the coastal area of Alexandria, just opposite the famous lighthouse that marked the entrance to the port: a place that is very difficult to analyse, given the changes that the coastline has undergone in the area of the seafront promenade and the earthquakes that occurred throughout the Middle Ages.

Cleopatra is undoubtedly the most famous queen of Egypt. Her adventures with her two lovers, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, have inspired leading playwrights, novelists and filmmakers. As a result, painters and other artists have been compelled to place her figure in a palace and give her surroundings architectural and decorative forms capable of reflecting the luxury of her existence in an almost legendary Alexandria.

Pillars of the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Karnak, in Thebes. Lithograph from 1846. David Roberts, CC BY

Inspiration of the time

The solutions that have been proposed to date have been very varied. For some, Cleopatra lived in a kind of Egyptian temple, inspired, why not, by those of Thebes, Edfu or Philae, three important cultural centres of antiquity.

Others imagined the façade of her Alexandrian palace as a row of Doric columns, as well proportioned as those of the Parthenon. And no one has shied away from the idea of painting the walls, sometimes like those of some pharaonic tombs located opposite Thebes, now Luxor, sometimes with lively scenes taken from Greek ceramic vases dating back several centuries before Cleopatra. Everyone can recall, if they wish, the films they have seen, or the chapter of Asterix and Cleopatra – the comic by Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny – where the Gallic heroes are commissioned to build a palace for Caesar and his demanding lover.

View of the Parthenon in Athens, photographed in 1978. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

What does archaeology tell us?

Do we have any information about what the queen's residence was really like? Archaeology is of little help: excavations in the neighbourhood where the Ptolemaic palaces stood in Alexandria have revealed the outlines of foundations, but nothing more.

Join us and support evidence-based information.

Subscribe to the newsletter

All we know, from them and from the few ancient descriptions that have come down to us, is that it was not a single palace, but rather a group of pavilions protected by a wall. Something similar, therefore, to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

As for the pavilions themselves, taken individually, we can assume, thanks to incongruous remains discovered in the city, that they belonged to a very specific architectural style known as Hellenistic Baroque. During this artistic period, highly complex Corinthian capitals with profuse plant decorations were popular. In addition, the entablatures allowed for creative contrasts of light and shadow. Circular rooms surrounded by columns were also abundant, niches or small apses were used enthusiastically, and there was a passion for cone-shaped roofs with concave profiles, such as those used in certain pagodas in the Far East.

Examples of Hellenistic Baroque

Fortunately, examples of this peculiar architecture have survived. All of them are outside Alexandria but always in places that, for one reason or another, may have felt an attraction to the court of the Ptolemies.

Bust of Mark Antony on display in the Vatican Museums. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

We know, for example, that the palace of the Roman governor of Ptolemais, on the coast of present-day Libya, followed these principles in the early years of the 1st century BC. A few decades later, we find the same formulas in Italy, in the baroque paintings that adorned Pompeian residences built – what a coincidence! – during the time of Julius Caesar.

This style was also adopted in Judea by King Herod the Great, protected by Mark Antony, in his most imaginative constructions.

Pharaoh's treasure

Perhaps the best example of this ‘Hellenistic Baroque’ style can be found in a masterpiece known to all film and travel enthusiasts: the so-called Khazneh or Treasury of the Pharaohs in Petra, carved into the rock of this cave city.

Khazneh Temple, Petra, Jordan. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Obviously, the Nabataean monarch who commissioned it – probably Aretas III, who died in 62 BC – wanted his bones to rest behind an ostentatious façade and decided to use a royal pavilion as a model. Why not take inspiration from those that amazed visitors to Cleopatra's father in nearby prestigious Alexan

Can you imagine what the palace that served as the residence of Cleopatra, the famous queen who marked the end of the Ptolemies, might have looked like? This is one of the questions that my colleague Miguel Ángel Elvira, professor of art history at the Complutense University, and I asked ourselves during a conference held at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid on the city of Alexandria under the Ptolemies, the dynasty that ruled Egypt from the conquest of Alexander the Great until the Roman invasion of Augustus.

This queen lived in a huge palace, remodelled several times over three centuries, which occupied the coastal area of Alexandria, just opposite the famous lighthouse that marked the entrance to the port: a place that is very difficult to analyse, given the changes that the coastline has undergone in the area of the seafront promenade and the earthquakes that occurred throughout the Middle Ages.

Cleopatra is undoubtedly the most famous queen of Egypt. Her adventures with her two lovers, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, have inspired leading playwrights, novelists and filmmakers. As a result, painters and other artists have been compelled to place her figure in a palace and give her surroundings architectural and decorative forms capable of reflecting the luxury of her existence in an almost legendary Alexandria.

Pillars of the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Karnak, in Thebes. Lithograph from 1846. David Roberts, CC BY

Inspiration of the time

The solutions that have been proposed to date have been very varied. For some, Cleopatra lived in a kind of Egyptian temple, inspired, why not, by those of Thebes, Edfu or Philae, three important cultural centres of antiquity.

Others imagined the façade of her Alexandrian palace as a row of Doric columns, as well proportioned as those of the Parthenon. And no one has shied away from the idea of painting the walls, sometimes like those of some pharaonic tombs located opposite Thebes, now Luxor, sometimes with lively scenes taken from Greek ceramic vases dating back several centuries before Cleopatra. Everyone can recall, if they wish, the films they have seen, or the chapter of Asterix and Cleopatra – the comic by Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny – where the Gallic heroes are commissioned to build a palace for Caesar and his demanding lover.

View of the Parthenon in Athens, photographed in 1978. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

What does archaeology tell us?

Do we have any information about what the queen's residence was really like? Archaeology is of little help: excavations in the neighbourhood where the Ptolemaic palaces stood in Alexandria have revealed the outlines of foundations, but nothing more.

Join us and support evidence-based information.

Subscribe to the newsletter

All we know, from them and from the few ancient descriptions that have come down to us, is that it was not a single palace, but rather a group of pavilions protected by a wall. Something similar, therefore, to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

As for the pavilions themselves, taken individually, we can assume, thanks to incongruous remains discovered in the city, that they belonged to a very specific architectural style known as Hellenistic Baroque. During this artistic period, highly complex Corinthian capitals with profuse plant decorations were popular. In addition, the entablatures allowed for creative contrasts of light and shadow. Circular rooms surrounded by columns were also abundant, niches or small apses were used enthusiastically, and there was a passion for cone-shaped roofs with concave profiles, such as those used in certain pagodas in the Far East.

Examples of Hellenistic Baroque

Fortunately, examples of this peculiar architecture have survived. All of them are outside Alexandria but always in places that, for one reason or another, may have felt an attraction to the court of the Ptolemies.

Bust of Mark Antony on display in the Vatican Museums. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

We know, for example, that the palace of the Roman governor of Ptolemais, on the coast of present-day Libya, followed these principles in the early years of the 1st century BC. A few decades later, we find the same formulas in Italy, in the baroque paintings that adorned Pompeian residences built – what a coincidence! – during the time of Julius Caesar.

This style was also adopted in Judea by King Herod the Great, protected by Mark Antony, in his most imaginative constructions.

Pharaoh's treasure

Perhaps the best example of this ‘Hellenistic Baroque’ style can be found in a masterpiece known to all film and travel enthusiasts: the so-called Khazneh or Treasury of the Pharaohs in Petra, carved into the rock of this cave city.

Khazneh Temple, Petra, Jordan. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Obviously, the Nabataean monarch who commissioned it – probably Aretas III, who died in 62 BC – wanted his bones to rest behind an ostentatious façade and decided to use a royal pavilion as a model. Why not take inspiration from those that amazed visitors to Cleopatra's father in nearby prestigious Alexan

Pillars of the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Karnak, in Thebes. Lithograph from 1846. David Roberts, CC BY

Inspiration of the time

The solutions that have been proposed to date have been very varied. For some, Cleopatra lived in a kind of Egyptian temple, inspired, why not, by those of Thebes, Edfu or Philae, three important cultural centres of antiquity.

Others imagined the façade of her Alexandrian palace as a row of Doric columns, as well proportioned as those of the Parthenon. And no one has shied away from the idea of painting the walls, sometimes like those of some pharaonic tombs located opposite Thebes, now Luxor, sometimes with lively scenes taken from Greek ceramic vases dating back several centuries before Cleopatra. Everyone can recall, if they wish, the films they have seen, or the chapter of Asterix and Cleopatra – the comic by Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny – where the Gallic heroes are commissioned to build a palace for Caesar and his demanding lover.

View of the Parthenon in Athens, photographed in 1978. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

What does archaeology tell us?

Do we have any information about what the queen's residence was really like? Archaeology is of little help: excavations in the neighbourhood where the Ptolemaic palaces stood in Alexandria have revealed the outlines of foundations, but nothing more.

Join us and support evidence-based information.

Subscribe to the newsletter

All we know, from them and from the few ancient descriptions that have come down to us, is that it was not a single palace, but rather a group of pavilions protected by a wall. Something similar, therefore, to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

As for the pavilions themselves, taken individually, we can assume, thanks to incongruous remains discovered in the city, that they belonged to a very specific architectural style known as Hellenistic Baroque. During this artistic period, highly complex Corinthian capitals with profuse plant decorations were popular. In addition, the entablatures allowed for creative contrasts of light and shadow. Circular rooms surrounded by columns were also abundant, niches or small apses were used enthusiastically, and there was a passion for cone-shaped roofs with concave profiles, such as those used in certain pagodas in the Far East.

Examples of Hellenistic Baroque

Fortunately, examples of this peculiar architecture have survived. All of them are outside Alexandria but always in places that, for one reason or another, may have felt an attraction to the court of the Ptolemies.

Bust of Mark Antony on display in the Vatican Museums. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

We know, for example, that the palace of the Roman governor of Ptolemais, on the coast of present-day Libya, followed these principles in the early years of the 1st century BC. A few decades later, we find the same formulas in Italy, in the baroque paintings that adorned Pompeian residences built – what a coincidence! – during the time of Julius Caesar.

This style was also adopted in Judea by King Herod the Great, protected by Mark Antony, in his most imaginative constructions.

Pharaoh's treasure

Perhaps the best example of this ‘Hellenistic Baroque’ style can be found in a masterpiece known to all film and travel enthusiasts: the so-called Khazneh or Treasury of the Pharaohs in Petra, carved into the rock of this cave city.

Khazneh Temple, Petra, Jordan. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Obviously, the Nabataean monarch who commissioned it – probably Aretas III, who died in 62 BC – wanted his bones to rest behind an ostentatious façade and decided to use a royal pavilion as a model. Why not take inspiration from those that amazed visitors to Cleopatra's father in nearby prestigious Alexandria?