Terrace (gardening)

In gardening, a terrace is an element where a raised flat paved or gravelled section overlooks a . A raised terrace keeps a house dry and provides a transition between the hard materials of the architecture and softer ones of the garden.

Since a level site is generally regarded as a requisite for comfort and repose, the terrace as a raised viewing platform made an early appearance in the ancient Persian gardening tradition, where the enclosed orchard, or paradise, was to be viewed from a ceremonial tent. Such a terrace had its origins in the far older agricultural practice of terracing a sloping site: see Terrace (agriculture). The Hanging Gardens of Babylon must have been built on an artificial mountain with stepped terraces, like those on a ziggurat.

Lucullus brought back to Rome first-hand experience of Persian gardening in the hilly sites of Asia Minor; the villa gardens of Maecenas, which included libraries open to scholars, incurred the disdain of Seneca. At Praeneste during the early Imperial period, the sanctuary of Fortuna was enlarged and elaborated, the natural slope being shaped into a series of terraces linked by stairs.

The imperial villas at Capri were built to take advantage of varied terraces. At the seaside Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, the villa gardens of Julius Caesar's father-in-law fell away in a series of terraces, giving pleasant and varied views of the Bay of Naples. Only some of them have been excavated. At Villa of Livia, probably part of Livia Drusilla's dowry brought to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, rooms in the cryptoporticus beneath terracing were frescoed with trees in bloom and fruit.

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