Public Statues Across Time And Cultures

The seat of power. A symbol of authority and prosperity. The center of a complex nexus of social and cultural forces. A palace is all of these and more. Palaces are mirrors of the societies that created them and the rulers that occupied them.

Classical archaeology—the excavation and analysis of ancient Greek and Roman sites—was born on Wednesday, October 22, 1738. On that day, Roque Joaquín Alcubierre, an engineer in the army of the Bourbon royal family in Naples, was lowered by ropes down a square well shaft cut through volcanic material that had formed on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.