Imperial Garden Cities: Babylon, Palmyra, Samarkand, Agra

This study day is available as both an in person and a recording only event. The recording will be made available to ALL attendees on the Monday following the event and will be available for 4 weeks.

Gardens for pleasure and leisure, memorial, ornament or horticulture have been a feature of urban and country landscapes since antiquity. In both Christianity and Islam gardens with abundant flowing water, fruit trees and fragrant flowers are associated with paradise. This study day takes us through four garden cities and more than 2000 years. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built according to tradition by King Nebuchadnezzar for his Median queen, who missed her mountain homeland. Were they myth or reality? Palmyra, an oasis city in the Syrian desert, is surrounded by vast date palm groves. A wealthy trading emporium, it was one of the grandest cities of the Graeco-Roman Orient. Samarkand, visited by Alexander the Great and destroyed by Genghis Khan, was rebuilt by Tamerlaine. Heir to the nomadic traditions of the Central Asian steppe, Tamerlaine often held court in the splendid gardens which surrounded his capital. Mughal Agra was developed as a riverfront garden city, described by a contemporary poet as ‘a sweet-smelling garden with new blossoms’ with pavilions, fountains, pools, water wheels, baths and running water in over forty gardens along the river and within the imperial fort.

Lectures

1   Babylon: Hanging Gardens and more

2   City of Palms in the Syrian desert: Palmyra and its empire

3   Samarkand: A Timurid garden city

4   Agra: City of riverfront gardens