The Urban Plan of 'Royal Residences' of Achaemenid Fars: Persepolis, Pasargadae, Tamukkan

The article at hand aims to discuss the urban plan of the Achaemenid heartland cities and their characteristics. The sites under discussion belong to three ‘royal residences’ located in Achaemenid Fars, which should in fact be considered as Persian royal centres. These centres, namely Pārsa, Pasargadae and Tamukkan, included different institutions and functioned as headquarters to control the territory under their administration. By presenting the archaeological evidence and the already existing results of new investigations in these ‘royal residences,’ this article will review how all these centres have actually been built based on the Achaemenid principle of diffuse urbanism. As recently discussed by other archaeologists, Achaemenid urbanism corresponds to very large urban projects that include several unbuilt areas – in addition to the built ones – some of which correspond to green spaces, as a result of which the density of buildings in these cities is generally low. It will be subsequently shown that the aforementioned settlements could be considered as cities. This article will likewise explain how a number of buildings in these settlements together with a green space can form a single complex.