This 137 room palace was built on a hilltop by the Phoenician pro-Persian king of the neighbouring city Marion to watch over the pro-Greek city of soli, following an unsuccesful revolt of the latter against the Persians in 498 B.C.. It was the headquarters of a garrison and consisted of state apartments, large storerooms and bathrooms. In 449 B.C. when the Persians were defeated and the Greek rule was established, the ruler of Marion was replaced by a pro-Greek prince and alterations were made and a second storey with walls made from mud bricks was added.
The pro-Persian and pro-Greek histories of this royal residence lasted for some 70 years and after it was destroyed by the inhabitants of Soli in a fire in 380 B.C. it was never built. The entrance of the original palace of the first period was in the south-west. Here a porch led to the state apartments; a main room (1) and inner hall and on the two sides a series of connecting rooms (2&3). This section of the palace is thought to have had an official function. From here a broad stairway of seven steps led to columned court surrounded with rooms on three sides. Water almost all the main rooms was supplied from the undergound cisterns cut into the living rock of the mountain, where the winter rain was collected.
The stone stele designed to hold a windlass over the cistern in this central courtyard has an unfinished Figure as its centre and is thought to have been brought from somewhere else. Some of storerooms (6) contain holes in which the amphorae were sunk. In the North-west corner there is a water closet (7) beside another deep cistern. More storerooms (9) stood in the eastern corner. On this side also stood a hot bath (10), one of the earliest of its kind. When the Persian rule was replaced by that Greek, E1 was closed and a new entrance (E2) was built. The ramp (II), an angled vestibule (12), a stairway and an ante room (13) opening to the central courtyard were added. New storerooms (14) around a courtyard (15) were also built.
During excavations a clay pot blackened by the fire which Destroy Vouni, gold and silver bracelets, silver bowls, and hundred of coins, bearing stamps of Marion, Kition, Lapithos and Paphos were discovered. The small rock island of Petra tou Limniti visible from the palace has traces of a Neolithic settlement. At the top of the hill on which the palace was built and towards the south are the remains of a temple built for Athena in the third quarter of the 5th century B.C.. This sanctuary consisted of two successive courtyards and a sacred enclosure. Here traces of the holes in which the statues were secured have survived.
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