Great Palace Mosaics Museum

The mosaics discovered during excavations in the northeastern part of the cloister in the Eastern Roman Grand Palace in 1935 are magnificent both artistically and in terms of the richness of the depiction of the scenes. The works exhibited in the Great Palace Mosaics Museum from AD 450 to 550 have no religious content. The representations from daily life, nature and mythology probably owe their vitality to the many experts led by the leading masters of the time.

The museum is located in the Arasta Market in the Blue Mosque complex and was founded to cover the mosaic floor treatment, which was partially preserved in the northeastern part of the colonnade courtyard of the Great Palace from the Eastern Roman period. Only 180 square meters of the mosaic surface were exposed.

The Mosaic Museum of the Grand Palace was under the new management of the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul in 1953. From 1979 it became a unit of the Hagia Sophia Museum. The restoration and conservation, which began 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.