Factional Capitals of the EB II time frame

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Seleucia’s Domestic Architecture Apartment House City Blocks

The domestic architecture of Seleucia was based on a rectangular street grid with apartment house blocks measuring approximately 140x70 meters. Aerial photos indicate that more than 350 of these blocks were included within the city’s walls. These apartment house blocks were composed of multistoried rooms grouped around courtyards, narrow corridors, and large plazas.

This type of architecture was common throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world, however the use of the street grid and standardized city blocks is indicative of Hellenistic urban planning. This layout is very similar to that used at Alexandria, except there the city blocks were typically more square-shaped. The view below is a modeled reconstruction of Block G6 (which was located near the city's center; the second block south of the diversionary canal), taken at a very low angle looking from the south towards the north.

The scale of this model is very close to 1:1. One will notice a number of human sized figures standing in the plazas. These are provided for a sense of scale. Translating this form of architecture to fit the EB format, with a scale of about 10:1, around 25 to 35 of these city blocks might be used to represent the Seleucid residential area within the interior city walls. This would provide room for the special buildings. An apartment house city block model may also need to be simplified a bit, as far as variability is concerned.