This city has also a fine castle on the east at the foot of a hill, but which is uninhabited, and has no other rooms in it but a magnificent palace, which is built partly into the hill; it is most wonderful, as you will learn from what I am about to tell you. This palace is very lofty, and seems solid half way through. Outside there is a flight of steps eight or ten paces long, and three broad, which mounts to the royal gate of the palace; the entrance is in a very large hall, on one side of which is a solid cube, intended to be a hiding place, sustained by four large columns, five paces and about twice the grasp of my arms in girth. The capitals of these columns are wonderfully carved; the cement is of a certain mixture or stone like fine jasper, as I really believed it to be; but trying it with my knife, I found it was not hard. They were placed here not so much for use as for show, as the cube (dome) is sustained by strong thick walls. Then, further in, there is another long narrow hall, with many little chambers like rooms; and entering further, one finds a vast hall with many windows looking on to the city, since the palace is above it, as I have said, standing on a hill overlooking the city and the country round for a long way. All these rooms are beautifully decorated with layers of cement of various colours. All the ceilings of the rooms are decorated and coloured with gilding and ultramarine blue. The large hall looking on to the city has many columns round it, which seem to support the roof; still it is kept up by strong walls, and they are placed there for the sake of appearance, as they are of the most beautiful marbles, not white, but in colour like silver, so that in each one of them are reflected the city, the hall, all the columns and people there. And at each window of this hall, there are pilasters of fine marble of the same kind and appearance as the columns, which reflect in the same way but in a greater degree, as they are flat, so that one can see not only the city, but also the surrounding country, the mountains and hills more than twenty miles distant, all the gardens and the great plain. This city has, besides, some other great advantages. The principal one is its being situated in a marvellous position at the head of a fine large plain towards the east, in a place like a small inlet at the foot of a high mountain, though this belongs to the chain ten miles further to the east. On the west there is another, but not very extensive, plain, stretching three miles from the city.