Through the Outer Gardens of the Saray - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 99

sites and exciting videos of the archaeological work in progress,
including the preservation of the ancient ships discovered in the
harbour.
The first gallery of the Istanbul Through the Ages exhibit is
arranged chronologically, beginning with the founding of the ancient
Greek city-state of Byzantium in the seventh century B.C. and ending
with the Turkish Conquest in 1453. The first part of the exhibit that
one sees includes objects ranging from the archaic period through the
Roman era, including tools, pottery, household artifacts and funerary
monuments. Looking over the balcony here one sees a reconstruction
of the façade of the temple of Athena at Assos, dating from the late
sixth century B.C. The remaining galleries of the exhibit are arranged
topographically, with objects found in various parts of the city and its
most important Byzantine monuments. One of these shows the works
of art discovered during the restoration of Kalenderhane Camii, the
former church of the Kyriotissa (incorrectly identified as St. Saviour
Akataleptos); these include frescoes of the life of St. Francis dating
from the Latin Occupation of 1204-61, and a beautiful mosaic
portait of the Virgin from the pre-iconoclastic period, the only work
of this era extant in the city. One particularly fascinating exhibit is
a fragment of the porphyry group of the Tetrarchs, a statue of the
Emperors of East and West and their Caesars that originally stood
in the square known as the Philadelphion on the Marmara slope of
the Third Hill. The statue was carried of by the Venetians when the
Latins sacked Constantinople in 1204, leaving beyond this fragment,
which was rediscovered in 1965 by the Turkish archaeologist Nezih
Firatlı. Another interesting exhibit is a fragment of the so-called
Serpent Column in the ancient Hippodrome (see Chapter 6). One
of the three intertwined bronze serpents that form the column lost
its head during the Ottoman period, but a fragment of it was found
in 1847 and eventually preserved in the museum. The penultimate
gallery has exhibits from Genoese Galata dating from the last two
centuries of the Byzantine period, including coats-of-arms of Latin
knights who were buried in the church of SS. Paul and Domenic,
now known as Arap Camii (see Chapter 20). In the last gallery we see
a length of the huge chain that was used by the Byzantines to close