Boukoleon Palace
Boukoleon Palace is a baroque palace in Atlantis, the capital of Diadochia. The Palace was built on the site of a hunting lodge. The Palace gardens and hunting grounds were expanded in the nineteenth century by Emperor George VII of Diadochia. The Boukoleon Palace is privately owned by the imperial family.
The present-day Boukoleon in Atlantis is all that remains of a seventeenth-century imperial pleasure garden that was once surrounded by the wetland forests of the Mármara river. Empress Zoe II of Diadochia opened the Boukoleon's gardens to the public in 1777, at the request of her son Crown Prince John (future Emperor John VII).
History
Until the 18th century, the area around the Boukoleon consisted of forestland used by the Emperor and his court as a hunting ground. In 1614, Emperor Constantine V built a hunting lodge on the site. In 1630, Emperor Constantine VI added a Dutch-style gardens. Under his successor, Emperor Eric III, the Boukoleon area saw increased settlement by nobility and Diadochian Orthodox monks and eventually became part of central Atlantis. In 1677, Eric III, added an extensive Baroque garden to the hunting lodge of his predecessors.
John VII had the ancient Baroque garden altered entirely to suit the taste of the Atlanteans; additional avenues providing shade were laid out, benches were added affording the opportunity to rest, and even nightingales were introduced to provide an acoustic backdrop. The Atlanteans expressed their gratitude by rapidly turning the Boukoleon into one of Atlantis’s ‘hot spots’ as it evolved into a major city. The Emperor responded with his usual sarcasm to complaints from the nobility, who felt the exclusivity of their domain to have been disrupted; by saying that if he (the noble) wanted to remain amongst his own, then his only choice was the Imperial Crypt or his own town house.
In addition to the opening of the Boukoleon, access was successively granted to the imperial gardens and hunting grounds in and around Atlantis, which had formerly been closed to the public at large. Indeed even when John's mother still ruled, he worked to ensure that the grounds of the Chalkopráteia would be open as a recreation facility for all from 1769 (he was only twelve), while the gardens of the Blachernae were open from 1778.
