Great Hall of the Magnates (Torrune)

The Great Hall of the Magnates is a magnificent edifice in the Serrapine Quarter of Torrune's High City, centered around a grand audience chamber used by the Archon, his court, and his guests on certain ceremonial occasions. It is located in the Tirasval, a stone's throw from the eastern foot of the Hill of Okhtar where the Archon's palace stands. Just to its north is the Jhovan Market, and just to its south is the Pearl Market. A cryptoporticus, a vaulted rock-cut passage descending the hillside via a series of stairways, leads from the Archon's palace down to the Great Hall. This passageway is dug into the slope of the hill and has no entry points between its two ends, thus allowing movement directly between the palace and the Great Hall via a route that is inaccessible from the outside. 
The Great Hall's audience chamber has a soaring domed roof held up by huge marble columns, with multi-tiered galleries looking down on the inlaid mosaic floor and the Archon's raised dais. Occasions for its use include the investiture of a new Archon, the formal presentation of Palatine legates or envoys from foreign lands, the Archon's reception of the priests and priestesses of sacred processions on various holy days, certain high feast days when the Archon presides over festivities, and the few days of the year when the Archon himself (rather than his Portreeve or various magistrates) hears cases and petitions in a public forum. The rest of the time, the Great Hall is not used, and the Archon typically receives guests, dignitaries, plaintiffs, etc. in his own audience-chambers in his palace atop Okhtar's Hill. 
The northeast facade of the Great Hall also has a large, semi-domed apse or exedra set into it, flanked by pillars of ornamental stone and framing a canopy-covered balcony that overlooks the broad Lotharian Way running down the Tirasval's center (which widens further into a sort of elongated plaza where it passes by this spot). From this raised position, the Archon can appear to the people of the city and address crowds even bigger than could be accommodated in the Great Hall's interior.