The Great Palace Mosaic Museum, is located close to Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul, Turkey, at Arasta Bazaar. The museum houses mosaics from the Byzantine period, unearthed at the site of the Great Palace of Constantinople.
The Great Palace Mosaics Museum was under the new management of Istanbul Archaeology Museum in 1953. As of 1979, it became a unit of the Hagia Sophia Museum. The restoration and conservation, started in 1982 with the protocol between the General Directorate of Monuments and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and the Austrian Academy of Sciences
The mosaics unearthed in excavations in the northeastern section of the cloister in Eastern Roman Grand Palace in 1935, are magnificent both in terms of artistic and in terms of the richness of depictions of the scenes. The works exhibited in the Great Palace Mosaics Museum, dated between 450-550 AD do not have religious content. The depictions taken from daily life, nature and mythology probably owe their vitality to the many experts under the leadership of the leading masters of the era.
The museum is located inside the Arasta Market in the Blue Mosque Complex, and it was formed to cover the mosaic floor treatment which remained partially preserved in the northeastern part of the colonnaded courtyard of the Great Palace belonging to the Eastern Roman Period. Only 180 square meters of the mosaic area was uncovered.
The Great Palace Mosaics Museum was under the new management of Istanbul Archaeology Museum in 1953. As of 1979, it became a unit of the Hagia Sophia Museum. The restoration and conservation, started in 1982 with the protocol between the General Directorate of Monuments and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, was completed in 1997.
Own or work here?