Handout Lecture 5 Constantinople PDF

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ARC 315: World Architecture & Urbanism

Lecture 5 The New Rome: Constantinople Constantinople, capital of the Roman, then Byzantine Empire, 330-1453 - *Focus on late antique and early Byzantine period: 4th-6th centuries Constantine I (r. 306-337) - Ends tetrarchy established in 293, becomes sole ruler of reunited Roman empire - Edict of Milan: 313, legalized Christianity Constantine in Rome: Arch of Constantine, Rome, 312-15 St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome, c. 320-30 (“Old St. Peter’s”) A Christian Imperial Capital: Late Antique and Byzantine Constantinople, 4th-6th centuries Byzantion, Greek colony on site of Constantinople, founded by Byzas of Megara, 8th c. BCE Septimius Severus (r. 193-211), Roman emperor who besieged Byzantion in 196, then rebuilt/enlarged it - Built Tetrastoon (square with four stoas), embolos , Severan Walls Foundation of Constantinople (Constantinopolis = “Constantine’s City”): 324/330 Select emperors after Constantine: Valens (r. 364-378); Theodosius I (r. 379-95); Theodosius II (r. 408-50); Justinian (r. 527-65) Constantinian Walls, 328, no longer survive Theodosian Walls, 413, and Golden Gate (Porta Aurea) Aqueduct of Valens, 368-375 Cistern of Philoxenos (Binbirdirek cistern), early 6th century Mese = grand, colonnaded central boulevard, the city’s main thoroughfare, which extended the Severan embolos Milion = the milestone that demarcated the starting point of the roads of the Empire, at the end of the Mese next to the Augusteion Augusteion = rectangular forum, surrounded by porticoes, which incorporated the Chalk Gate, a monumental entranceway to the imperial palace complex (built over the Tetrastoon) Forum of Constantine, c. 328 - Column of Constantine, c. 328 (depicted on Peutinger map) with statue of Constantine as Apollo, a Nymphaeum (monumental fountain), and Senate House Forum of Theodosius (Forum Tauri), 386 - Triumphal Arch of Theodosius, 393 Great Palace: Chalk Gate (Bronze Gate); Daphn (residential wing) Hippodrome, c. 200 and later rebuilt by Constantine - Kathisma, imperial viewing box, where emperor showed himself to the people - Placed on spina: Serpent Column (originally Tripod of Plataea, ancient Greek), Obelisk of Theodosius I (originally Obelisk of Thutmosis III, Karnak, c. 1500 BCE) Church of the Holy Apostles, by Constantine, c. 330, rebuilt by Justinian in c. 532 - Cf. Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, c. 325-35 - martyrium = building (usually with a central plan) marking a holy site for Christians, such as places in the stories of Jesus and the apostles, or where the relics of martyrs were kept Hagia Sophia, 326, rebuilt under Justinian 532-37 by architects Anthemios and Isidoros Recommended further reading: R. Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Website www.byzantium1200.com for digital reconstructions of the city.

ARC 315: World Architecture & Urbanism

Whatever the prehistoric antecedents of Istanbul, the continuous historical development of the site began with the foundation of a Greek colony from Megara in the mid-7th century BC. Despite its strategic location, it was not until AD 330, when Constantine the Great founded a new capital on the site, that the city acquired a role that profoundly influenced the history of Europe and Asia Minor for the next 1000 years. Although some of the most famous buildings from the Byzantine period survive in Istanbul, many more have perished without trace. The Megaran colony of Byzantion occupied the hilly eastern end of a peninsula defined on the south by the Sea of Marmara and on the north by the Golden Horn. Under the Pax Romana, the emperor Hadrian (reg AD 117–38) provided the city with an aqueduct, part of which still stands, and Septimius Severus, having destroyed the city after the revolt of 193–6, rebuilt it in a form that reinforced its Roman features and thus foreshadowed the city of Constantine. The nucleus of Byzantion consisted of an acropolis occupying the hill at the eastern tip of the peninsula, and a commercial–residential quarter spreading inland from the natural harbours just inside the Golden Horn. The acropolis housed the city’s temples, and had a theatre on its eastern slope. To the west, the settlement developed around two main squares: the agora, later known as the Strategion, and the Tetrastoon, so named after its four porticos (but subsequently known as the Augustaion). A transverse avenue, later known to Byzantines as the Mese, or central street, formed the eastern extremity of the Via Egnatia (the main Roman road through the Balkans) and connected the Tetrastoon with the main city gate. It was this south-western quarter of the city that achieved its greatest development under Septimius Severus, who is said to have built the Baths of Zeuxippos, the Hippodrome for chariot racing and porticos lining the Mese. He also rebuilt the theatre and to the north of this added an arena, the Kynegion, for wild-beast shows. In AD 324 Constantine began to transform Byzantion into a great imperial city bearing his name. The initial transformation was conditioned by the geographical constraints of the site, the prior existence of the ancient settlement and the Via Egnatia, and the Roman imperial ideology of the Tetrarchy (293– 312). Within the walls Constantine built on the legacy of Septimius Severus, and outside expansion followed the axis of the Via Egnatia. The site of the Hippodrome determined the site of the Great Palace, for in Rome and in the other cities where emperors had resided the palace closely adjoined the circus, thus allowing the emperor direct access to the box from which he watched the games. Constantine’s foundation, formally inaugurated on 11 May 330, was defined by a new set of land walls more than tripling the area of the city, which now consisted of an old and a new town. The newer part of the old town, comprising the Hippodrome, the Baths of Zeuxippos, the Tetrastoon and the porticos lining the Mese, was rebuilt on a grand scale, with the addition of various new structures grouped around the Tetrastoon: the Great Palace, a senate house, the imperial stoa known as the Basilica and the domed, four-arched Milion, which marked the end of the Via Egnatia. The main landmarks of the new town were a series of monumental structures along the continuation of the Mese: the circular Forum of Constantine, with its senate house and red porphyry column bearing the Emperor’s statue; the Tetrapylon, where the Mese intersected with a transverse avenue connecting the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn; the group of statuary known as the Philadelphion near the Capitol, at the point where the Mese forked; the ceremonial Golden Gate, through which the southern branch of the Mese left the new city wall; and the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantine’s mausoleum, just inside this wall near the northern branch of the avenue. This programme was clearly designed to create a megalopolis on a par with Rome, Antioch and Alexandria. Its pretensions were emphasized by the importation of works of art looted from all over the Greek world. Yet Constantinople did not as yet represent a new departure in ancient urban planning. It was the last, albeit the greatest, in the series of Tetrarchic ‘Romes from Rome’, and like its predecessors, namely Trier, Milan, Thessaloniki and Nicomedia (now Ismit, Turkey), it replicated those features of Rome that served the administrative and ceremonial needs of an itinerant military court. It was not intended to replace Rome, or to displace the economic and cultural centre of Byzantion. The urban space marked out by Constantine developed slowly under his immediate successors, who improved the water supply, harbour capacity and bathing facilities. The Christian character of the city became gradually more emphatic with the building of two major churches, Hagia Sophia and the new Holy Apostles, by Constantius II (reg 337–61), and the foundation of the first monasteries and welfare institutions. It was not, however, until after the disaster of 378 when Emperor Valens was killed in battle against the Goths that Roman emperors seriously invested in the future of Constantinople as an imperial and Christian capital. Under this dynasty of Theodosios I the pace of urban expansion quickened dramatically. New public monuments and a new public

ARC 315: World Architecture & Urbanism

bath were erected in the old town, and at least two new fora (i.e. Forum of Theodosios or Forum Tauri and Forum of Arkadios), dominated by triumphal columns, were laid out along the Mese. The urban infrastructure was enlarged by the creation of a new harbour, and by the construction of massive new fortifications both on the land and along the sea shore. The new land walls, which were entered by an even grander Golden Gate, doubled the area of the Constantinian city. Their purpose seems to have been to protect the vast open-air reservoirs (often called cisterns) sunk on the high ground to the west of the Constantinian wall, which was left standing. The main expansion of the built-up area occurred within this wall, primarily on land reclaimed from the sea. By the mid-5th century Constantinople was coming of age as not only the New Rome but also a New Jerusalem, with a population estimated at between 300,000 and 600,000. From this point its appearance was regularly disfigured by two symptoms of overcrowding: devastating fires and popular violence associated with the Hippodrome games. Contemporary legislation gives the impression that the neat, rectangular ancient city was developing into a ramshackle medieval maze. The reign of Justinian I was undoubtedly a turning-point in the urban development of Constantinople. In 532 the Nika Riot left tens of thousands dead and the civic centre of the old town burnt to the ground. Ten years later the city was struck by an epidemic of bubonic plague, which killed half the population and recurred at regular intervals for the next two centuries. At the time of these disasters Justinian was a fanatical Christian autocrat much less concerned to preserve traditional civic culture than to ensure ‘that everything might have a new look and be associated with his name’ (Prokopios, The Secret History XI.2). Although he rebuilt everything that had been destroyed in the fire of 532, he gave pride of place to the church of Hagia Sophia, which rose from the ashes in a new form and on a vast, elevated scale, dominating the skyline like no other building. (Adapted from Paul Magdalino, “Istanbul,” Grove Dictionary of Art.)...