Behind The Thrones
Beyond the palace gate lay courtyards, gardens and rooms few could enter. Explore four places where power shaped everyday life.
01 · Türkiye · 1478
Topkapı Palace
There is a window in the council chamber that everyone in the room can see and nobody in the room can see through. It sits high on the wall, directly above where the grand vizier sat, and it is covered by a lattice. Behind it runs a passage connecting to the private quarters.
Read the story02 · China · 1420
The Forbidden City
In the winter of 1933, the staff of a museum barely eight years old stood in the courtyards packing porcelain into straw. The Japanese army had taken the northeast and was pressing toward Beijing, and the people running the place made a call that sounds reckless and turned out right: rather than defend the collection, they would move it.
Read the story03 · Spain · c. 1238
Alhambra
In 1812, Napoleon's army was leaving Granada, and before it left it packed the towers of the Alhambra with explosives. Several went up. The story told ever since is that a crippled Spanish soldier left behind in the fortress crept along the walls and cut the fuses before the rest could blow.
Read the story04 · India · 1648
Red Fort
After the British retook Delhi in the autumn of 1857, engineers went into the fort with demolition orders. What came down was not the wall — the wall was useful — but the palace behind it. Marble pavilions, garden courts, service quarters, the buildings where the imperial household had actually lived: most of it was cleared.
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