Architecture and City Planning
City Plan for
Nippur
(1500 BCE)
Urban Planning
• Walls (protection)
• Narrow streets
• Houses
• Markets
• Temples
• Gardens
• Canals (water ways)
Houses: Characteristics
- windowless
- walls: mud or brick
- floor: earth or brick
- doors: wooden
- courtyard
Houses: Rooms
Bathroom
• Brick floor
• Central drainage hole
Kitchen
• Fireplace
Reception room
• Used for sleeping in winter
Roof
• Used for sleeping in summer
Houses: Chapel and Tomb
Chapel:
• Alter (offering food)
• Statue or carving (household personal God)
• Incense (perfume)
Tomb:
• Under floor
• Adult family members buried
• Child remain in large, sealed vases (kept in chapel)
Palaces
• Where the ruler and family lived
• Large complex
• Called “the big house”
• Beautifully decorated
Ziggurats – “to build on a raised area”
• pyramid like structure
• Made of sun-baked bricks
• Outsides glazed with colors, astrological designs
• Shrine or temple at summit, accessible by ramp
• Believed to be home of the gods
• Priest only ones permitted inside
Fortifications
- Surrounded the city
- Used for protection
- Made out of mud bricks
- Gates built to enter/exit the city
- Sometimes architects added designs to them
City of UR
Royal Cemetery of UR
City of Babylon
Ishtar Gate
Hanging Gardens
of Babylon