ABSTRACT
Despite a wide range of written sources on ancient palaces, those about waterfront palaces dealing with the relationship between architecture and water are scarce. The aim of this chapter is therefore to investigate the reason behind building a palace next to a body of water and to understand its effects on the architecture. Designed either for administration, or to accommodate a ruler, governor or a senior official, waterfront palaces are located within direct contact of a body of water, which shapes their entire layout, and especially their waterfront facades. One of the oldest known palaces within this category is the Great Palace at Amarna, built along the river Nile in the fourteenth century BC. In this chapter the Great Palace at Amarna will be analysed architecturally and compared with the later examples of the ancient waterfront palaces, built in the Mediterranean and Middle East in pre-Hellenistic, Hellenistic, Roman and Late Antique eras.
