The Great Palace Mosaic Museum
 In ancient times, the palatial hill from the Sea of
Marmara to the Hippodrome. The palatial district extended from Hagia
Sophia and the Hippodrome to the cost line, where the sea wall acted as a
mighty boundry of great military value. Its basic layout, first determined
by Emperor Constantine, soon housed a collection of state buildings with
courtvards, throne rooms and auidience rooms, churces and chappels gardens
and fountains, libraries, assembly buildings, thermal baths and stadiums.
Throughout the centuries palaces decayed due to fires, earthquakes, and
other reasons. Finally, whatever remained were covered by earth.
British scientists
from the University of St. Andrews in Edinburg made extensive excavations
at the Arasta Bazaar in Sultan Ahmet square (1935-38) and (1951-54). Which
partly opened up one of the south-western buildings, so called "Great
Palace". The Great Palace had got a big courtyart with perisyle (1872
m²). It was decorated with mosaics. It was at this point that the
Austrian Academy of Sciens undertook to rescue. (Supervised by Prof. Dr.
Werner Jobst) study ane preserve the famous palace mosaic and to carry out
additional archeological examinations (1983-1997) within the scape of a
cooperation project with the Directorate General of Monuments and Museums
in Turkey.
When the peristylle
of The Great Palace was redone under Justinian I. (527-565). The Great
Palace mosaic was the largest and the most beautiful landscape in antiqity
(VI. century A.D). No where in the world of late antiquity can we find a
building with a tessellated pavement of similar size and perfection of
workmanship. It was probably made by an imperial workshop that surely have
employed the best craftmen gathered from all corners of the Empire, guided
by a master artist. It is this circumstance which makes it difficult to
compare the piece with creations, and thus to date it by means of
typological and stilistic methods. Composing the tessalated pavement, with
its many coloured lime, terracotta and glass cubes of 5 mm. One square
metre of floor space consumed about 40.000 cubes, which makes for
80.000.000 tesserae for entire area. The mosaic was brought to light only
in fragmenta and sections, which together make-up about one seventy the
original expance, but these suffice to convice us that it is one of the
most magnificent compositions known to us from antique mosaic art.
 In The Great Palace Mosaic the main field of the
composition was 6 metres in width. On either side of its edge it is
accopained by an exquisitely arranged border of folliage each 1.50 metres
wide, sufficient to cover the entire hall depth of 9 metres with a
tesselleted pavement. The frame is dominated by a highly naturalistic
acantus scroll. Acantus are filled with masked heads, exotic fruit and
animals. The frame, which sembolises a garden of eden. After frame when
looking at the scenes we find a movement from left to right in the
notheastern hall. The pictures describe open-air scenes, the life of
herdsmen the labour of peasants and the prowess of huntsmen. Scenes of
children playing of wilde beast and grazing animals alternate with
mythological motifs animal fables and fabulous creatures from exotic
countries, animals, hunting, games, bucolic scenes nature and myths are
the leading themes in the succession of pictures. On surviving parts of
the mosaic we still count 90 different themes populated by some 150 human
and animal figures.
Adres:
Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi
Torun Sok. Arasta Çarşısı Sultanahmet - İSTANBUL
Tel: 0212 518 12 05
Fax: 0212 512 54 74
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