Istanbul Diary - Day 4: The Great Palace Mosaic

Remember the bird on a mosaic?  Well, we saw that at the innocuously named Tile Museum.  We thought this was a museum of the Iznik tiles of Istanbul, but no, this was a museum of the mosaics that tiled the great byzantine palace floor!

This museum, tucked away next to the Sultanahmet mosque, below the Arasta bazaar, for some reason is not given that much importance in Istanbul, though it has these mosaics which date back to the time of Justinian, when the Byzantine emperor had a huge palace complex, which stretched from the area between the Hippodrome and the Aya Sofia, all the way to the coast.

According the the boards at the museum, only an eighth of the original mosaic has survived, and this is about 250sqm!  The mosaics are not religious, but depict hunting scenes, village life and also have decorative borders.

There was a lot of realism and cheer in most of the scenes, but somehow I did not like the children's eyes in these mosaics.  They for some reason looked kind of evil and misshapen  to me.  What do you think of the mosaic on the right?  Its supposed to be a child.

The wild-life is very diverse.  Tigers, lions, leopards, elephants, bears, boar, gazelle and monkeys.  In the first picture, above the dragon are a pair of leopards eating a stag.  There were also hunters stalking a tiger.  All very realistic.  I wondered where the Romans had seen the big cats, and then remembered the Coliseum and the-thrown-to-the-lions business.

Did lions and tigers roam the plains of Europe?  Or were these from their exploits in Africa?  I must read about this.

Then there were all the mythical creatures, griffins and chimaeras, and the wine god Dionysos, all combining to make a fantastic collection.

The mosaics are faded and there are several parts missing, but its not hard to imagine how the whole floor must have looked, with Toga-clad Romans striding across it!  There were Corinthian columns surrounding the large courtyard in the palace of Justinian.

Historically, the current Sultanahmet disrict was the Byzantine palace district, from the time Constantine set up the empire's eastern capital here.  His Palatium Magnum in Constantinople supposedly rivalled the Palatine hills of Rome.  

These mosaics were lost in the ruins, after the destructions of the Fourth Crusade until excavations in 1935 revealed the floor.  With the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque and other buildings now standing in the district, excavations are difficult.  

However, one more lot of excavations are in progress on a 7,000 sqm plot, approximately north of Aya Sofiya.  Byzantine period bath ruins and other such stuff are being ucovered and restored, and is supposed to be open to the public by end 2008.