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In this fantasy palace I built a year ago I tried my hand at pretty much every major historical architectural style and tried to tie them together.

Before the grand entrance stands a large statue inspired by the Colossus of Rhodes (or at least how it would’ve looked like). The main layout of the palace is inspired by the Forbidden Palace of Beijing, with its walled square plan. Hence the Chinese watchtowers on the top of the walls. The walls themselves however are more reminiscent of El Escorial monastery in Spain, which is a marvel of Palladian classicism. The front entrance to the complex in the centre is a mashup of the palace of Persepolis with the temple of Heaven in Beijing on top (because why not right!). It is flanked by two side entrances built to look like Persian iwans (or rather the tumurid style based on Goharshad mosque in Mashhad).

Once through the main gate the palace opens with a great courtyard which ends with a facade of the largest structure of the build, the great dome. The facade itself is inspired and quite closely models two buildings: facade of St Mark in Venice in the lower half and the St Paul cathedral in London above. The dome itself is a mixture of the pantheon and Bramante’s tempietto.

The main courtyard is flanked by Doric columns and two buildings in a shape of the Greek cross. The one on the right is heavily inspired by the gallerie des batailles and the chapel in Versailles, although it also has an early Byzantine dome and is adjoined by Persian secondary domes and iwans. The one on the left is inspired by St Peter’s cathedral in Rome as well as St Paul’s in London. The facades of both these lateral buildings facing the courtyard are symmetrical and are based on the neoclassical facade of the Almudena cathedral in Madrid.

That’s already a long explanation but there is more! Immediately after the great dome building is the triumphal arch based on the arch of Constantine in Rome and the Zhengyanmen gate in Beijing (quite the pair although it resulted being somewhat tall for its width). The arch is flanked by two identical structures in the style of Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

This leaves the last structure of the build, and although it isn’t as big as the great dome, it is certainly my favourite and in fact the one that started this little project. In its essence it is Hagia Sophia in Constantinople but with four half domes instead of two, so it would resemble more the Fatih or the Sultanalmet mosques. The main entrance of it, which acts as a narthex is based on the baths of Diocletian in Rome, yet employs some Dravidian architectural detailing on the top.

The interior is decorated with Byzantine mosaics, such as Christ Pantokrator on the main dome as it would in Hagia Sophia in the good old days. Inside the church has a ground floor and galleries, accessible via porphyry stairs. The exterior dome is influenced in its design by Santa Maria della Salute in Venice and the St Augustin church in Paris.

The northern and southern entrances employ my last great architectural style present in this build: gothic. I am personally not the biggest fan of gothic architecture and it was my first and only try at it, and what better structure to use than Notre Dame of Paris. I think it turned out okay. The eastern section where one would usually find Sancta Sanctorum is empty, because I didn’t build it.

Overall I’d say the project is 90% finished. I did a lot of last minute rearranging and not all pieces fit together well (I mean that literally, there are gaps in walls and parts missing). But after the said rearranging I found any further work rather tedious and kinda gave up on it. But I think it deserves to be published not in the least so that I don’t lose the save file. Looking back at it now after a year I see a lot of things I would've done very differently, for example I now take much greater care with classical proportions and columns, yet I certainly don't see it as a failed project.

Thanks for reading this if you did and do share your thoughts on how all of the different styles fit together!

P.S. I leave the file download, it is however of a monstrous size.