From Haghia Sophia to Beyazit Square - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 133

7
From
Haghia Sophia
to Beyazit Square
Aya Sofya Meydanı, the square beside Haghia Sophia, occupies a site
which was once the heart of Byzantine Constantinople. The square
coincides almost exactly with the Augustaeum, the publc forecourt to
the Great Palace of Byzantium. On its northern side the Augustaeum
gave access to the church of Haghia Sophia and to the Patriarchal
Palace, while outside its south-eastern corner stood the Chalke, or
Brazen House, the monumental vestibule of the Great Palace. The
Hippodrome was located just to the south-west of the Augustaeum
and the Baths of Zeuxippus were to its south. A short way to the west
of the Augustaeum there was another great communal square, the
Stoa Basilica, a porticoed piazza surrounded by the buildings of the
University of Constantinople, the central law courts of the empire, the
principal public library, and a large outdoor book market. Thus the
Augustaeum and its immediate neighbourhood were at the very hub
of life in the ancient city. Today the square is no longer a civic centre,
but it is still a very central starting point for visting the antiquities on
the First and Second Hills of the old city.
At the south-western corner of the Augustaeum, at the beginning
of the modern Divan Yolu, there stood a monument called the
Miliarum Aureum, the Golden Milestone, known more simply as
the Milion. Excavations in 1965 unearthed a fragment of the Milion
beside the Ottoman suterazi, or water-control tower, just to the right
at the beginning of Divan Yolu. The fragment, a tall marble stele,
was part of a four-sided ceremonial archway surmounted by statues
of Constantine the Great and his mother Helena, holding between
them the True Cross.