Knossos
Heraklion, Greece
Knossos is the largest Minoan palace on Crete, 5 km south of Heraklion, built from about 1900 BC on a hill that had…
111 tickets & tours
By type
Best palaces, villas & baths to visit worldwide
The palaces in this catalogue include royal residences, imperial villas and the great public baths, all built for display. A visitor finds courtyards, halls, staircases and storerooms and, in the best-kept ones, the decoration: floor mosaics, painted plaster, marble veneer and pools. Minoan palaces such as Knossos and Phaistos are mazes of rooms around a central court; Roman villas spread across gardens and terraces; baths keep their hot and cold rooms, furnaces and drains. Diocletian’s Palace in Split is unusual: a town still lives inside its walls.
Diocletian’s Palace
Split, Croatia
Diocletian's Palace is the retirement residence that the Roman emperor Diocletian built on the shore at Split…
31 tickets & tours
Roman Baths, Bath
Bath, United Kingdom
The Roman Baths in Bath are the remains of the temple and bathing complex that grew around a hot spring in the town of…
18 tickets & tours
Medina Azahara
Córdoba, Spain
Medina Azahara is the ruined palace-city that the first caliph of al-Andalus, Abd al-Rahman III, built in the 10th…
17 tickets & tours
Baths of Caracalla
Rome, Italy
The Baths of Caracalla are the ruins of the huge public baths opened in Rome in AD 216, covering about 15 hectares…
16 tickets & tours
Hadrian’s Villa (Villa Adriana)
Tivoli, Italy
Hadrian's Villa, below Tivoli about 30 km east of Rome, is the vast country palace that the emperor Hadrian built…
13 tickets & tours
Villa Oplontis
Torre Annunziata, Italy
Villa Oplontis, also known as the Villa of Poppaea, is a vast Roman seaside villa in Torre Annunziata, buried by…
9 tickets & tours
Phaistos
Faistos, Greece
Phaistos is the second great Minoan palace of Crete, set on a ridge above the Messara plain 62 km south of Heraklion.
8 tickets & tours
Domus Aurea
Rome, Italy
The Domus Aurea is the Golden House that Nero built on the Oppian Hill after the fire of AD 64, now a maze of vaulted…
6 tickets & tours
Baths of Diocletian
Rome, Italy
The Baths of Diocletian in Rome, built between AD 298 and 306, were the largest public baths of the ancient city,…
1 ticket or tour
Pausilypon
Naples, Italy
Pausilypon is the Roman seaside villa of Publius Vedius Pollio on the Posillipo headland of Naples, reached through the…
1 ticket or tour
Roman Baths of Varna
Varna, Bulgaria
The Roman Baths of Varna are the remains of a public bath complex built in the late 2nd century AD in Odessos, the…
1 ticket or tour
Villa Romana del Casale
Piazza Armerina, Italy
The Villa Romana del Casale, near Piazza Armerina in central Sicily, is a grand country residence of the early 4th…
1 ticket or tour
Billingsgate Roman House and Baths
London, United Kingdom
Billingsgate Roman House and Baths are the remains of a riverside house in Roman London, built in the late 2nd century,…
No online ticket
Cerro da Vila Roman Ruins
Vilamoura, Portugal
Cerro da Vila is a Roman villa and small port beside the marina of Vilamoura on the Algarve coast.
No online ticket
Grottoes of Catullus
Sirmione, Italy
The Grottoes of Catullus are the ruins of a vast Roman villa at the tip of the Sirmione peninsula on Lake Garda, built…
No online ticket
Herodium (Herodion)
Bethlehem, Palestine
Herodium is the fortified palace that Herod the Great built on a cone-shaped hill in the Judaean Desert, about 5 km…
No online ticket
Hisham’s Palace
Jericho, Palestine
Hisham's Palace, or Khirbat al-Mafjar, is an Umayyad palace and bath complex of the first half of the 8th century,…
No online ticket
Malia Palace
Malia, Greece
Malia is the third largest Minoan palace on Crete, on the north coast about 40 km east of Heraklion and 3 km from the…
No online ticket
Roman Villa of Noheda
Villar de Domingo García, Spain
The Roman Villa of Noheda, in the hills about 20 km north-west of Cuenca, holds one of the largest figurative mosaics…
No online ticket
Trier Imperial Baths
Trier, Germany
The Imperial Baths of Trier, the Kaiserthermen, are the ruins of a huge Roman bath complex begun shortly before AD 300,…
No online ticket
Allow two to three hours for a palace or villa, longer for an estate as large as Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli. Many floors are seen from walkways, and stepping on mosaics or leaning over the rails is forbidden. Open sites have little shade, so go at opening or late afternoon. Know what you are looking at: Knossos is partly rebuilt in concrete, while Phaistos was left as excavated. A site museum, as at Medina Azahara, often explains the plan better than the ruins do.
Start with Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily, with the finest Roman floor mosaics anywhere; Knossos on Crete in Greece; Diocletian’s Palace in Croatia; the Roman Baths at Bath in England, with the steaming Great Bath; Hadrian’s Villa in Italy; and Medina Azahara near Córdoba in Spain, the caliph’s palace city.