--KAPAK ARAÞTIRMA kopya - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

le in 1204. By the ninth-tenth century, Byzantine supremacy at sea called for a magnificent
harbour and renewed imperial apartments on the shore.
Already under Justinian I (527-65), with the annexation of the Constantinian Palace
beside the Hippodrome to his villa in the quarter of Hormisdas near the sea-shore,
the Great Palace began its descent to the Sea of Marmara. Some sort of connexion
must have already existed, for the patriarch Paul had been shuffled quickly from the
Baths of Zeuxippos and taken into exile by the sea from the Palace in 354 3. But an actual
landing staircase was probably built only in the first half of the sixth century. It might
be identified with the pier in front of which the general Belisarios had his ship blessed
by the patriarch Epiphanios when he set sail for Italy for the Gothic war in 536 4.
The parallel walls behind the small Maritime Gate to the West of the monumental
landing staircase may be the remains of at ancient staircase. In two places, the Northern
piers still show the strong line of ashlars at the spring of the arches, suggesting a
Justinianic date. When our researches started, a monogram of Justinian and Theodora
was still visible in perfect condition in the re-employed marble pieces at the entrance of
the Maritime Gate. Two years ago the monogram was found in pieces and these pieces
were brought to the Archaeological Museums of İstanbul by John Freely. Every year the
decay of the marble becomes worse and its restoration becomes more and more urgent.
These parallel walls are now divided in two parts by the railway track of the old
Orient Express. To the north, together with the western remains of the parallel walls, perpendicular
to Nakilbent Caddesi, still stand the basement remains of the colonnade
which figures in the famous engraving by Choiseul Gouffier, as well as the corner of the
walls facing the so-called Tower of Belisarios 5. There the Five Arches (only two are visible
today in the narrow back-courtyard of Küçük Aya Sofya Spor Kulübü) supported,
in my opinion, the part of the House of Hormisdas which was to be permanently incorporated
in the Imperial Palace. Part of it was probably the hall of seven conches where
the council of 536 was held in Hormisdas 6. This hall, I think, later became the Chrysotriklinos,
the main throne and banqueting hall of the Middle Byzantine Palace.
To the south of the railway track, following the line of the sea-walls to the east,
the extant landing staircase (perpendicular to the supposed Justinianic landing staircase),
the three-mullioned window still visible with one column and capital in the seawalls,
and the tall lighthouse tower, sticking out from the sea-walls at the eastern extremity
of the site, were part of a gigantic renewal of the sea-approach to the Palace
possibly to be dated to Theophilos’reign (829-42) 7.
I would tend to date the small colonnade hidden in the sea-walls besides the
lighthouse tower to the time of Basil I (867-86) who, it is known, built a bath near the
lighthouse tower. The loggia, also called the House of Justinian, which consists of a series
of oblong vaults built over the open terrace on the sea beside the ninth century
structures, might have been part of the renewal of the Boukoleon area of the Palace at
the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitos (913-59): certainly, as Corbett already noted
during the Walker Trust excavations in the forties, it does not date from the time of Justinian
8 (Table: 3).
3Socr.II.16 = Soz. III.9. Cfr. G.Dagron, Naissance d'une capitale. Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 à 451, (Bibl.
Byz., Etudes, 7) Paris 1974, pp. 431-32.
4 Proc. Bell. Vand. 362: Haury, 365.
5 CH. Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage pictoresque de la Grèce, t.II, 2. Paris 1822, tav.91.
6 "in venerabili palatio ... quod cognominatur Hormisdae .. in .. heptaconco triclinio", Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum,
ed. E.Schwartz, Concilium universale Constantinopolitanum sub Iustiniano habitum, tomus IIII, vol.II, Berlin 1914,
169.4-6 (cfr. Mansi, VIII, 817-34).
7 Cfr. A.Van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople. The Walls of the City and Adjoining Historical Sites London 1899,185.
For the Lighthouse Tower at Michael's time see Th. Cont. I.10; III.4; Cer. App. ad Lib. I: 492.18-23. Cfr. Cedr. II.174.
These were the lights announcing Arab attacks, which Michael III wonted to obscure, to go on racing (Th.Cont. IV.35).
8 Theoph. Cont. 447. Cfr. Millingen (Const. byz. , 280). Cfr. G.U.S. Corbett, The building to the north of the Boukoleon
harbour called the "House of Justinian", in The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors, 2 nd report, ed. D. Talbot-
Rice, Edinbourgh, 1958, 168-193.
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