The Palace

The palace is a complex consisting of various buildings. The central unit, more than 50 m long and 32 m wide (ca. 163 x 104 feet), evidently housed the administrative offices of the Pylos kingdom, storage facilities, and residential quarters. It is centered on the throne room (6), a large rectangular room with a central hearth (see plan, inside back cover). This was the principal hall of state, where the king met with elite members of society and carried out rituals. To the southwest another similar building, smaller than the central one but still of considerable size, may perhaps be the earliest element of the complex, so far as the date of its construction is concerned; but both were certainly occupied down through the 13th century until the whole establish¬ment was destroyed in a great fire not far from 1200 B.C. This building too contained residential and storage facilities and formal apartments of state, and like the Main Building, it seems to have had a separate wine storehouse (called by Blegen and Rawson the Wine Magazine) lying to the north, more-or-less behind it. There was also toward the northeast a fairly large separate building that served as the palace workshop, where spare parts for chariots seem to have been kept and repairs of metal and leather goods were carried out. To the northwest, between this building and the Wine Magazine and behind the central wing, there were also some smaller buildings. Blegen and Rawson thought they were perhaps for the accommodation of servants and slaves, but their purpose remains uncertain.