Along the Land Walls - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 362

last bastion on the long line of the Theodosian walls, that the Turkish
ensign first waved over this city.
TEKFUR SARAY
Just beyond the site of this gate there stands one of the most
remarkable buildings remaining from the days of Byzantium. It is
known in Turkish as Tekfur Saray, or the Palace of the Sovereign,
though it is sometimes called the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. The
palace was probably built in the latter part of the thirteenth or early
in the fourteenth century, and served as one of the imperial residences
during the last two centuries of the Empire: it was perhaps an annexe
of the nearby Palace of Blachernae. It is a large three-storeyed building
wedged in between the inner and outer walls of the last stretch of the
Theodosian fortifications. On the ground floor an arcade with four
wide arches opens onto the courtyard, which is overlooked on the
first floor by five large windows. The top floor, which projects above
the walls, has windows on all sides, seven overlooking the courtyard,
a curious bow-like apse on the opposite side, and a window with
the remains of a balcony to the east. The roof and all the floors have
disappeared. The whole palace, but especially the façade on the court,
is elaborately decorated with geometrical designs in red brick and
white marble so typical of the later period of Byzantine architecture;
compare the façades of St. Saviour in Chora and of St. Theodore,
both of the fourteenth century.
After the Conquest the palace was used for a variety of purposes.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was used as a
menagerie, particularly for larger and tamer animals such as elephants
and girafes. (The latter animal particularly amazed European
travellers, for they had never seen one before. In 1597, Fynes
Moryson describes it thus: “a beaste newly brought out of Africke,
(the Mother of Monsters) which beaste is altogether unknowne in
our parts, he many times put his nose in my necke, when I thought
my selfe furthest distant from him, which familiarity I liked not;
and howsoever his Keepers assured me he would not hurt me, yet I
avoided those his familiar kisses as much as I could.”) Before the end
of the seventeenth century the animals were moved elsewhere and the