All the gates leading up into this palace are still distinctly marked by the threshold or door-sill, a great stone, lying in its place, with grooves inserted for the pivots of the doors, which were of wood, but had their pivots shod with bronze, as was proved by the actual remains. These doors divided a double porch, entered either way between two pillars of wood, standing upon stone bases still in their place, and flanked by antæ, which were below of stone and above of wood dowelled into the stone piers. All the upper structure of the gates, and, indeed, of all the palace, seems to have been of wood. There are clear signs of a great conflagration, in which the palace perished. This implies the existence of ample fuel, and while the ashes, mud-bricks, etc., remain, no trace of architrave, or pillar, or roof has been found. There are gates of similar design leading into the courts and principal chamber of the palace, the floors of which are covered with a careful lime concrete marked with line patterns, and so sloped as to afford easy drainage into a vent leading to pipes of terra cotta, which carried off water. The same careful arrangements are observed in the bath-room, with a floor of one great stone, twelve feet by nine, which is likewise pierced to carry off water. The remains of a terra cotta tub were found there, and the walls of the room were panelled with wood, set into the raised edge of the floor-stone by dowels sunk in the stone. No recent discovery is more interesting than this. Of the walls little remains but the foundations, and here and there a couple of feet of mud-bricks, with signs of beams let into them, which added to the conflagration. But enough remains to show that the walls of the better rooms were richly covered with ornament. There is a fresco of a bull still preserved, and reproduced in Dr. Schliemann’s book; and there was also found a very remarkable frieze ornament in rosettes and brooch patterns, made of blue glass paste (supposed to be Homer’s _κύανος_) and alabaster. This valuable relic shows remarkable analogies in design to other prehistoric ornaments found in Greece. The size of the main hall, or men’s apartment, is very large, the floor covering about 120 square yards, and the parallel room in the palace at Troy was consequently taken to be the cella of a temple. But there seems no doubt that the great room at Tiryns, with a hearth in the middle and four pillar bases near it, supporting, perhaps, a higher roof, with a clerestory, was the main reception room of the palace; a smaller room of similar construction, not connected with the former, save by a circuitous route through passages, seems to have been the ladies’ drawing-room.