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Description
This aerial photograph, looking straight down on King Herod's (37-4 BCE) palace at Herodium, clearly shows its double circular defense wall and four towers. Three of the semi-circular towers were defensive, while the completely round tower probably served for both defense and as the coolest, breeziest place in the hot summer months. Directly in front of the round tower is a large rectangular garden courtyard surrounded by a colonnade and flanked at both north and south ends by niches whose benches would have provided places to sit. A bathhouse was found at the lower left quadrant of the enclosure and a dining area was found in the lower right. During Herod's lifetime the walls would have stuck up above the ground; at some point after Herod died the mound was covered with stones to give it the appearance that it has today: that of nothing more than a hill, with the palace sunk into it.