Not a single multi-colored floor covering from Late Antiquity can compare with the splendor of the Great Palace Mosaics, where dream and reality intermingle.

Very few people who stroll through Istanbul’s touristic area in and around Sultanahmet Square are aware that a whole other world lies buried meters beneath their feet. At the beginning of the 4th century A.D. the Emperor Constantine (306-337 A.D.) founded the city of Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul, which would continue to preserve its mystery and allure for other nations over subsequent centuries. Creating the administrative center in 328 A.D., the Emperor consecrated the city on 11 May 330. Within the framework of a comprehensive building program that commenced from the hill where Topkapi Palace stands today, construction got underway first of the Palatium Magnum or Imperial Palace, followed by the metropolitan church known as Hagia Eirene or ‘Divine Peace’, in this city which would henceforth be possessed of an unmatched topography.