Turkey Guide
İstanbul
The Mosaic Museum
Opening time: Daily except Mon 9am–4.30pm
Price: 4YTL
The other substantial reminders of the Great Palace are the mosaics displayed in the Mosaic Museum (Büyüksaray Mozaik Müzesi), 500m inland from the Palace of Bucoleon, on Torun Sokağı. It can be reached by running the gauntlet of salespeople in the Arasta Çarşısı – a renovated street-bazaar selling tourist gifts, whose seventeeth-century shops were originally built to pay for the upkeep of the nearby Sultanahmet Camii.
Many of the mosaics in the museum are presented in situ, so that some idea of their original scale and purpose can be imagined. The building has been constructed so that some of the mosaics are viewed from a catwalk above, but can also be examined more closely by descending to their level. These remains were part of a mosaic peristyle, an open courtyard surrounded by a portico. To the south of the portico and down to the Palace of Bucoleon were the private apartments of the emperor, while the public sections of the palace were located to the north. Among the mosaics, probably dating from Justinian's rebuilding programme of the sixth century, are portrayals of both animals in their natural habitats, and domestic scenes. These include a vivid illustration of an elephant locking a lion in a deadly embrace with its trunk and two children being led on the back of a camel.