Windows, Recesses, and the Piano Nobile in the Minoan Palaces

Abstract

A very distinctive feature which characterizes the west, that is the principal, fagade of the four Minoan palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia, and Gournia, is a series of broad shallow vertical recesses which break the otherwise smooth exterior surface of the wall at varying intervals and produce what may be termed a paneled fagade.' A single well preserved recess has also been found recently on the fine stone faqade forming the northeast side of the Mycenaean palace at Pylos.2 Although such recesses may therefore be regarded as virtually standard equipment in palaces they are conspicuously absent in even such large Minoan mansions as the Little Palace and the Royal Villa at Knossos, and in the houses at Tylissos, Nirou Khani, and Mallia. They are likewise not found in the summer-palace at Hagia Triada.3 The historical origin of this architectural feature is to be sought, no doubt, in Egypt and the Near East. The ultimate prototype would appear to be a wall of vertical bundles of reeds connected by screens of reed matting and plastered with a layer of clay, a form of wattle-and-daub. Such construction was probably common in southern Mesopotamia by at least the early fourth millennium B.c.; later the form was translated into adobe-brick