Monumentality and the Byzantine City

As Melchior Lorichs’ panorama of Constantinople shows, in 1559, the former capital of the Byzantine Empire appeared as an enormous expanse of roofs. The only elements that stood out over the roofs were the walls surrounding the whole city, the mosques, the tall silhouettes of freestanding columns, and the remains of Valens’ aqueduct. Except for the mosques, all these were Byzantine buildings, still easily recognizable in the urban setting. In order to investigate the monumentality of the Byzantine city, the city must be considered the subject – just as it has been portrayed in Lorichs’ panorama. This chapter makes use of all the available sources but necessarily rely upon textual and visual evidence, which convey viewers’ perceptions and the cities’ reception through the time, in order to explore themes never really approached in the scholarship on Byzantium: can the modern concept of monumentality be applied to the the Byzantine city? was the Byzantine city intended to be monumental?