apadana

thumb|Ruins of the Apadana Palace thumb|upright|Reconstruction of the Apadana's roof by Chipiez 200px|thumb|Reconstruction of the Apadana by Chipiez thumb|Apadana of Susa, reconstruction drawing, 1903 Apadana (, or ) is a large hypostyle hall in Persepolis, Iran. It belongs to the oldest building phase of the city of Persepolis, in the first half of the 5th century BC, as part of the original design by Darius the Great. Its construction was completed by Xerxes I. Modern scholarship "demonstrates the metaphorical nature of the Apadana reliefs as idealised social orders".

==Etymology== As a word, (Old Persian 𐎠𐎱𐎭𐎠𐎴, masc.) is used to designate a hypostyle hall, i.e., a palace or audience hall of stone construction with columns. The word is rendered in Elamite as ha-ha-da-na and in Babylonian ap-pa-da-an is etymologically ambiguous. It has been compared to the Sanskrit (आपादन) which means 'to arrive at', and also to the Sanskrit apa-dhā (अपधा) which means "a hide-out or concealment", and the Greek (), meaning "storehouse". The word survived into later periods in Iran, as the Parthian '''pdn(y) or 'pdnk(y) "palace", and outside Iran it still survives in several languages as loan-words (including the Arabic (transliteration: fadan) for "palace" and the Armenian aparan-kʿ for "palace".)