Abstract

The term palace reflects a system of signs, meanings, forms and the mental universe of a society. In this sense, if the palace takes its roots into a history and a geography from which it takes its meaning, it persists into the comtemporary world from its capacity to product, on the base of a meaning already existing but which foundation are outdated. These forms reproduct a system of values that they already carry. Our goal is then to question the constitutive elements of the historic and geographic emergence of palaces, that have made palaces, through a system of signs, the symptoms of a modern and cosmopolite society, before becoming, grasped by the myth - in a barthien meaning of the term and through a legacy discourse - a form' of globalization.

Keywords: Myth, imposing architecture, feeling 'at home', system of signs, the emergence of palaces, globalization, industrial, western, traffic, business, promising economic sector recomposition of wealth, lifestyle, luxurious monumentality, Ritz, social entertainment, heritage hybrid place, cultural enterprise.