ABSTRACT
This chapter formulates the most rewarding intellectual approaches to understanding the significance of palaces, and to suggest ways in which new research devoted to sites such as Durham Castle and Auckland Castle could best be taken forward. It argues that, in assessing the significance of a palace, the scholarly method of identifying formal similarities with other palaces, such as fourteenth-century palaces in Spain, Italy, and France, is inadequate. The significance of a building depends on whether, and in what way, it is either a prime object or part of a sequence. If it is a prime object, the palace is the first appearance of an innovation, irrespective of the reason for that innovation's appearance. If it is part of a sequence, this means that another building has served as a prime object, providing the model for the sequence of which the building in question is a part.
