Covered Hippodrome
Encyclopedia
Great Palace of Constantinople
The Great Palace of Constantinople — also known as the Sacred Palace — was the large Imperial Byzantine palace complex located in the south-eastern end of the peninsula now known as "Old Istanbul", modern Turkey...
. The French scholar Rodolphe Guilland also equated it with the emperors' private hippodrome. It lay on the southeastern corner of the palace complex, and connected the Palace of Daphne in the north with the later lower palace complex around Bucoleon
Bucoleon
The Palace of Boukoleon or Bucoleon was one of the Byzantine palaces in Constantinople. It was probably built by Theodosius II in the 5th century.The palace sits on the shore of Marmara Sea. Hormisdas is an earlier name of the place...
in the south, through the gate of Skyla. It played a great role in imperial ceremonies, and is not to be confused with the far larger adjacent Hippodrome of Constantinople
Hippodrome of Constantinople
The Hippodrome of Constantinople was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named Sultanahmet Meydanı in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with only a few fragments of the original structure surviving...
, which in Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
sources was often distinguished as the "uncovered" Hippodrome. From the 9th to the 11th centuries, it was also the site of one of the Byzantine capital's highest courts, the tribunals of the "judges of the Hippodrome" and of the "judges of the velum
Velum
Velum may refer to:* Superior medullary velum, part of the nervous system that stretches between parts of the brain* Veil , the veil-like membrane of immature mushrooms extending from the margin of the cap to the stem and torn by growth...
" .