The story of Istanbul’s Great Palace Mosaic Museum begins with the terrible fire which entirely destroyed the neighbourhood of İshakpaşa in Sultanahmet at the beginning of this century.
The traditional wooden houses of this part of the city had always been vulnerable to fire, and on 3 June 1912 disaster struck again. Disaster for the inhabitants, however, meant a golden opportunity for archaeologists. When the charred remains of the houses behind Sultanahmet Mosque and Haghia Sophia where the land slopes down towards the sea were cleared away foreign researchers immediately moved in. Foremost among the finds was the discovery of the Byzantine Great Palace by German archaeologist Wiegand and Swiss topographer Mamboury. Excavations of the palace, which had been built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527-565), sacked by the crusaders in 1206, and thereafter abandoned to fall into ruin, began in 1935 by a team from St. Andrews University under Prof Baxter. In 1938 they uncovered a series of splendid mosaics which had stood in the portico of the palace peristyle. With the outbreak of the Second World War the excavations came to a halt, to be resumed between 1951 and 1954.

These mosaics are the most important find of the century in Istanbul. They are also the largest and most magnificent sixth century mosaics ever discovered anywhere. The pavement originally surrounded the courtyard on three sides and covered an area estimated at approximately 2000 square metres, but only an 180 square metre stretch from the northeast portico survives today. Each square metre is made up of 40,000 pieces, which would mean that a total of 80 million had been used in all.
The pavement is 9 m wide with an ornate 1.5 m border consisting of both geometric and figurative motifs. In this vivid composition hundreds of small animals and fruits are depicted amongst foliate designs, including grasshoppers, lizards and tortoises. There are also four male figures - only three of which have survived - who probably represent the seasons. This border is thought to symbolise the fertile world of the god Dionysus. The central panel is filled largely with scenes from nature and daily life. There are gazelles drinking water, horses nibbling leaves off trees, bears feeding their young, birds mating, and animals fighting. In the scenes from daily life we see shepherds milking their goats, children herding geese, boys riding on camels or racing toy chariots in imitation of the real races in the hippodrome, a small child patting his dog, a donkey loaded with wood kicking up his heels at his owner, a young man feeding his donkey, fishermen, and Byzantine soldiers armed with shields and spears hunting tigers, leopards and other wild animals. They are all depicted with astonishing realism. Mythological creatures belonging to the world of pagan beliefs and symbolism have not been forgotten either.

The pictures and scenes are divided from one another by trees or architectural compositions. In its original form the central part of the pavement must have contained 90 different scenes and around 150 human and animal figures.
The mosaics were left in their original location exposed to view, and damp caused serious deterioration over the years. In 1983 an international campaign to rescue the mosaics was launched by the Austrian government and the Turkish Department of Monuments and Museums, and today the mosaics are preserved from further injury by the latest conservation techniques.
The Great Palace Mosaic Museum is located inside a 17th-century bazaar street known as Arasta Çarşısı on Torun Street just to the south of Sultanahmet Mosque. Although most of the superstructure of the Great Palace has gone the mosaics conjure up the atmosphere of this palace in a way that no amount of walls and columns could have done, and give us a startlingly vivid glimpse of life in early Byzantine Istanbul 1400 years ago.

* Şengül Gündoğan Aydıngün is an archaeologist and art historian.