Byzantine Constantinople, the walls of the city and adjoining historical sites

by Alexander Van Millingen

[1043]. Still, the Palaces of the Bucoleon may have been protected by a special enclosure, although the historians do not refer to it particularly.

In the garden of a Turkish house to the north of the lower palace, a portion of a Byzantine wall, about 130 feet in length and 40 feet high, is found standing. It was discovered, when walls and houses in the neighbourhood were demolished for the construction of the Roumelian Railway, and was then pierced by a very large vaulted gateway, over 18 feet high, supported by four great marble columns. Gate and columns have disappeared. If produced southwards, the wall would join the tower at the eastern end of the lower palace; while if produced northwards, the wall would abut against the retaining wall of the terrace on which the Mosque of Sultan Achmet and its courtyards are built. The wall is pierced with loopholes, facing east, and behind them a passage runs along the rear of the wall, through arches occurring at intervals.

Dr. Paspates (p. 120) regarded the wall as part of the Peridromi of Marcian (see Labarte, Le Palais Impérial de Consple., p. 214), attached to the Great Palace. But this view of its character is not consistent with the fact that the loopholes look eastwards. That fact indicates that the wall belonged to the Palaces of the Bucoleon which stood to the rear. The gate in the wall, likewise, shows that these palaces were separated from the area of the Great Palace. May the wall not have turned westwards, at its present northern extremity, to protect the Palaces of the Bucoleon along the north, and then southwards, to connect with the city wall at Tchatlady Kapou, and protect the palaces on the west? This, with the city wall along the southern front of the palaces, would put them within a fortified enclosure of their own.

[1044]. Theophanes Cont., p. 393.

[1045]. Leo Diaconus, v. p. 87; Cedrenus, vol. ii. p. 375.

[1046]. Nicetas Chon., pp. 169, 170.

[1047]. Anna Comn., iii. p. 137.

[1048]. Lib. xx. c. 23.

[1049]. Conquête de Consple., c. li. E.

[1050]. Ibid., c. lv.