The root of the Persephone colony was laid in 2738 with the arrival of the first colonists. The colony ships Yuri Gagarin, Christopher Columbus, and Marco Polo were themselves the first buildings of the colony, designed for a controlled crash into the Persephone terrain at a site that had been cleared from orbit with carefully-distributed explosives. The three ships, with cargo and passengers aboard, were driven carefully into the surface of the planet and pre-fabricated passageways were thrown up between them. These three gargantuan structures still form the core of the colony proper, though their interiors have been remodelled so thoroughly that little now remains of the original layout. Many of the best rooms and all four embassies are located within these hulls.

Shortly after the colony's establishment, the bulk of the colony was gradually flown in by Earth transport ships. These were large geodesic domes, constructed on Earth, built to be flexible enough to withstand Persephone's seismic instability, sturdy enough to last for many decades of hard living, and solid enough to keep the toxic atmosphere from contaminating the internal air system. These great domes soon sprouted up around the colony ships, linked up by long collapsing tubes. The early domes were soon found to have serious flaws: one of the metals used in the structure corroded easily in the sulfuric air, allowing unsafe amounts of atmosphere into the domes. The manufacturing error was corrected on Earth but it was too late for those already shipped. The housing crunch was so severe, though, that there were only two options: tolerate the broken domes or thrust much of the colony outside to die. The faulty domes were used on a temporary basis, but as the colony continued to grow, they were simply never replaced, and administrators took to crowding the poor or criminal into the unsafe structures, perhaps hoping that the bad air would kill them and save the colony the trouble of looking after them.

Some ninety-five percent of the colony, as well as virtually all the industry, now resides in these domes. There are a few larger, transparent domes used as sealed greenhouses for the cultivation of Earth crops, and the rest of the colony proper is left outside. Most of these are farms, where native plants are grown for cheap food, and the logging camps which provide the colony's main export. Workers out in these conditions wear respirators, goggles, boots, and gloves, but though it is an uncomfortable day's work farming in those conditions it is at least a safe one.