Fishbourne Roman Palace is in the village of Fishbourne, Chichester in West Sussex. The large palace was built in the 1st century AD, around thirty years after the Roman conquest of Britain, on the site of a Roman army supply base established at the Claudian invasion in 43 AD.
The rectangular palace surrounded formal gardens, the northern parts of which have been reconstructed. There were extensive alterations in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, with many of the original black and white mosaics being overlaid with more sophisticated coloured work, including the perfectly preserved dolphin mosaic in the north wing. More alterations were in progress when the palace burnt down in around 270, after which it was abandoned.