The paper treats the description of the palace of Alcinous (Od. 7,84–132), with two goals. Firstly, the use of the present tense (103–131) in the description, which has been found problematic by critics since Friedländer (1851), is elucidated by drawing on the evidence of the scholia and on Rijksbaron’s narratological interpretation. Secondly, I argue that the entire description is of importance for the narrative structure of the epic in that it exhibits complex points of contact with other passages of the epic and thus has a thematic function, which corresponds to the threefold division of the description: the feast in the palace (84‒102), the activities of the maids (103‒111) and the fruitfulness of the garden (112‒132). The whole description of the palace, with its thematic connections, invites the recipient to understand the epic in its ‘spatial form’.