World of mosaics - Byzantine mosaics

Not a single multi-colored floor covering from Late Antiquity can compare with the splendor of the Great Palace Mosaics, where dream and reality intermingle.

Very few people who stroll through Istanbul’s touristic area in and around Sultanahmet Square are aware that a whole other world lies buried meters beneath their feet. At the beginning of the 4th century A.D. the Emperor Constantine (306-337 A.D.) founded the city of Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul, which would continue to preserve its mystery and allure for other nations over subsequent centuries. Creating the administrative center in 328 A.D., the Emperor consecrated the city on 11 May 330. Within the framework of a comprehensive building program that commenced from the hill where Topkapi Palace stands today, construction got underway first of the Palatium Magnum or Imperial Palace, followed by the metropolitan church known as Hagia Eirene or ‘Divine Peace’, in this city which would henceforth be possessed of an unmatched topography.
The Palatine Hill on which the administrative center of Rome is situated served as a model for the new city. Bordered by sea walls along the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara, this area played host to the Byzantine and Ottoman dynasties for sixteen centuries until Atatürk made Ankara the capital of Republican Turkey.
 

A GIANT PALACE COMPLEX
Sultanahmet and its environs harbor Istanbul’s most important historical treasures. The Hagia Sophia, Hagia Eirene and the Hippodrome all provide visitors with clues to the splendor of this area in the Byzantine period. But despite its having been built over a very large area, the exact location of the Byzantine Imperial Palace is difficult to determine today. Archeologists, Byzantinists, art historians and architects from many countries have been working since the 19th century to determine the location of the palace area, to discover the historical sequence of its construction, to undertake scientific excavations and to ascertain and reconstruct its architecture.
Surrounded by magnificent sea walls, the palace complex, which was laid out in its main lines by the Emperor Constantine himself, extended from the Hagia Sophia to the Hippodrome and from there to the shore. Situated within this arrangement were buildings with courtyards, throne rooms and audience chambers, churches and chapels, gardens with fountains, libraries, assembly buildings, baths and stadiums. In later centuries the palace buildings were further expanded, undergoing change and the addition of new structures.
According to the latest research, the location of six terraces has been determined on which these structures were built in keeping with the features of the sloping terrain.
The bronze gate called the ‘khalke’, the senate building and the Magnaura Palace with its hydraulic-operated throne were located to the east of the broad area between Sultanahmet Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. The guards’ barracks, meeting hall and senators’ banquet hall were located to the southwest of this area.
Attached to the Tribunal to the west were the resplendent official buildings and the private palatial residences of the imperial family. A large number of buildings with large halls were also situated here. The Daphne Palace and the Cathisma Palace, from whose façade the imperial loggia overlooked the Hippodrome, stood where the Sultanahmet Mosque stands today, while the group of buildings which included the Great Palace mosaics was situated in line with the Hagia Sophia and Hagia Eirene.

MOSAICS UNMATCHED IN THE WORLD
The palace area was destroyed by fire during the Nika revolt in 532 A.D., after which the Emperor Justinian I (527-565 A.D.) launched a new period of construction, renovating and restoring the palace buildings. A series of two-storey columned galleries were constructed between the bronze gate, the Magnaura and the Hagia Sophia, joining the palace to the imperial church.
Again in this period the porticoed courtyard and ceremonial hall were re-adorned with even more magnificent decorations, and the columned, porticoed halls of this peristyle structure were laid with multi-colored mosaic floors. This richly decorative mosaic floor, which is exhibited today at the Great Palace Mosaic Museum, demonstrates that in their dimensions and interior decorations the palaces of imperial Istanbul were such as to overshadow even their counterparts in Rome. This mosaic floor, whose surface area covers 1872 square meters, is one of the richest and most beautiful landscape renditions that has survived to our day from the ancient period. Not a single multi-colored floor paving known to originate from Late Antiquity can match the splendor of the Great Palace Mosaic. This work, which was located in one of the main sections of the imperial palace around the ‘Chrysotriklinos’, gives visitors a concrete idea of the level of Istanbul’s secular architecture in the Byzantine period,
and represents the traditional mosaic technique that had its origins in the Anatolian lands but whose artistic framework was developed in Greece and Italy.

BOTH DREAM AND
REALITY
Floor paving was done by highly advanced masters who came to Istanbul from the various regions of the empire. They took as their subjects depictions of nature, pastoral life in the open air, toiling peasants and hunters. Besides children playing and animals grazing either in the wild or in pastures, imaginary creatures from mythology, fables and fairy tales are also represented.
Over 90 subjects with representations of some 150 human and animal figures can be found in the extant mosaic floor fragments, in whose compositions nature and the environment generally predominate. The Hellenistic-Roman tradition of adorning spatial interiors with landscape depictions thus continued as well in the Byzantine Palace.
The idea behind such depictions of ideal nature in the style of the gardens of the kings was to create in the palace interiors ‘gardens of paradise’. The evolution of the god Dionysus, which is reflected in the border decorations consisting of intertwined plants, also conforms with this interpretation.
The Great Palace Mosaics combine depictions from divergent worlds, joining East and West on common ground exactly like the charmed city where they were spread, and drawing us into a common dream.

Text:TARKAN KUTLU
Photo: ALI KONYALI