he effect is very strange when first seen by the
inexperienced traveller; but similar entrances are common in the mosques
of Armenia and Persia, and in the palaces of the latter country. In the
mosques "lofty and deeply-recessed portals," "unrivalled for grandeur
and appropriateness," are rather the rule than the exception; and, in
the palaces, "Throne-rooms" are commonly mere deep recesses of this
character, vaulted or supported by pillars, and open at one end to the
full width and height of the apartment. The height of the arch varies
in Sassanian buildings from about fifty to eighty-five feet; it is
generally plain, and without ornament; but in one case we meet with a
foiling of small arches round the great one, which has an effect that is
not unpleasing.

The domed apartments are squares of from twenty-five to forty feet, or a
little more. The domes are circular at their base; but a section of them
would exhibit a half ellipse, with its longest and shortest diameters
proportioned as three to two. The height to which they rise from the
ground is not much above seventy feet. A single building will have two
or three domes, either of the same size, or occasionally of different
dimensions. It is a peculiarity of their construction that they rest,
not on drums, but on pendentives of a curious character. A series of
semi-circular arches is thrown across the angles of the apartment,
each projecting further into it than the preceding, and in this way
the corners are got rid of, and the square converted into the circular
shape. A cornice ran round the apartment, either above or below the
pendentives, or sometimes both above and below. The domes were pierced
by a number of small holes, which admitted some light, and the upper
part of the walls between the pendentives was also pierced by windows.

There are no passages or corridors in the Sassanian palaces. The rooms
for the most part open one into the other. Where this is not the case,
they give upon a common meeting-ground, which is either an open court,
or a large vaulted apartment. The openings are in general doorways of
moderate size, but sometimes they are arches of the full width of the
subordinate room or apartment. As many as seventeen or eighteen rooms
have been found in a palace.

There is no appearance in any Sassanian edifice of a real second story.
The famous Takht-i-Khosru presents externally the semblance of such an
arrangement; but this seems to have been a m