The Patriarchal Palace in Late Sixth-Century Constantinople

Résumé

The Patriarchal palace was, by the time of the emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565), one of the symbolic and political centres of the Byzantine capital Constantinople. Yet, like the neighbouring and interconnected imperial palace, its architecture and topography remain only partially understood. In this study, the historical and archaeological record of this complex will be reviewed, supplemented by several previously neglected graphical sources. At some time in the 1570s, but most likely in 1574 or 1575, an unknown artist, possibly the Flemish Lambert De Vos, who is known to have visited Istanbul in 1572, recorded a drawing of Hagia Sophia and its immediate context, including an apparently ruinous structure which, an inscription on the drawing noted, was part of the church, but now served as a menagerie. The drawing will be argued, on the basis of comparative digital modeling, to depict the ›Thomaites‹ hall of the Patriarchal Palace appended to Hagia Sophia, at a time immediately prior to its demolition by the Ottomans. This attribution will be supported by two other graphical sources, the sixteenth-century prospect of Constantinople by Melchior Lorck, as well as three early twentieth-century survey drawings by the Swiss amateur archaeologist, Ernest Mamboury held in the Mamboury archive of the Istanbul department of DAI. This evidence will be used to supplement textual and material evidence to propose a reconstruction of the Patriarchal Palace, and its spatial and physical interconnection with Hagia Sophia.