Palace of the Porphyrogenitus

Run your hand along the facade, if you can reach it. The surface is not smooth. It is a rhythm of narrow red bricks and pale cut stone, laid in bands, like stripes on old fabric. The wall feels warm in the afternoon sun. Above you, empty windows open onto the sky. You are standing at one of the last Byzantine palaces in Istanbul that still has its walls standing to roof height.

This is the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. In Turkish it is called Tekfur Sarayı. The word tekfur was the name Ottoman Turks used for a Byzantine lord or ruler. So the Turkish name simply means the palace of the Christian prince. It sits in the far northwest of the old city, in the district of Fatih, right up against the great land walls. Most visitors to Istanbul never come this far. That is part of its quiet appeal.

First, the name. Porphyrogenitus is a Greek word. It means born in the purple. In the Byzantine Empire, a child born to a reigning emperor was delivered in a special chamber of the Great Palace, a room lined with purple stone. Purple was the colour of imperial power. A child born there carried this title for life. It marked them as true heirs, born while their father already wore the crown.

But which Porphyrogenitus gave the palace its name? Here the story becomes uncertain. A popular tradition links it to Constantine the Seventh, a scholarly emperor of the tenth century. Most historians now think the building is much later. The likelier candidate is a prince named Constantine, a son of the emperor Michael the Eighth Palaiologos. Michael recaptured Constantinople in 1261, after more than half a century of rule by Western crusaders. So the name may honour a prince, not an emperor.

That date matters. The style of this building belongs to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. This was the age of the Palaiologan dynasty, the last family to rule Byzantium. The empire was smaller and poorer than in its golden age. Yet its builders still loved decoration. Look at the patterns in the brick. You can see chequerboards, diamonds and zigzags. Builders of this period made the wall itself the ornament, instead of covering it in marble.

The palace was once part of a larger complex called Blachernae. In the late Byzantine centuries, emperors moved away from the old Great Palace near Hagia Sophia. They preferred this corner of the city, close to the walls and the Golden Horn. Blachernae was a cluster of halls, chapels and gardens. Almost all of it has vanished. This building is the main survivor. Imagine it surrounded by courtyards, with the noise of guards and courtiers on the walls behind.

Now look at the shape of the building. It rises over three levels. At ground level, a row of arches opens toward the courtyard. Above them, two floors of large windows face the same side. The upper floor, with its wide openings, likely held the grand rooms. One side of the palace is built into the line of the city walls. So it was both a residence and part of the city's defences. Comfort and fear lived in the same stones.

In 1453, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Second conquered Constantinople. The empire of the Byzantines ended. Their palace did not end with it. Over the next centuries, it changed its role again and again. That is the first surprise of this place. Its later life was stranger than its royal one. Few buildings in the city have been so many different things.

According to accounts from the Ottoman period, the palace at one time housed a menagerie. Exotic animals were kept here, and travellers wrote of elephants among them. Later, in the early eighteenth century, the building became a workshop for glazed tiles. Ottoman tile making at İznik, the famous centre further east, had been in decline. Officials tried to revive the craft here, inside the old palace. Tiles made in these workshops are now known as Tekfur Sarayı tiles. That is the second surprise. A Byzantine palace became an Ottoman pottery.

The changes did not stop there. In later centuries, the building is recorded as a shelter for the poor, and then as a glass bottle workshop. Each use left marks. Roofs and floors fell away. The great rooms stood open to the rain. For a long time, the palace was a shell, standing over a neighbourhood of small houses. Children played in its courtyard. Pigeons nested in its windows.

In recent years, a long restoration gave the building a new life as a museum. A roof and floors now protect the interior. Inside, displays tell the story of the palace and its tile workshops. Some pieces made here, along with fragments found during excavation, can be seen up close. Notice the colours on the tiles. The blues and greens are softer than the bright İznik work of the sixteenth century. They show a craft trying to recover its old skill.

Step back now, and look at the palace with the walls beside it. Behind you and to either side, the Theodosian land walls run across the city, first built in the fifth century. They protected Constantinople for roughly a thousand years. This palace was built into their northern end, where the walls turn toward the Golden Horn. If you walk along them, you can feel how the city's edge was once its most important place.

Around you, the neighbourhood carries on with ordinary life. You may hear a call to prayer from a nearby mosque, or traffic on the road along the walls. Laundry hangs from balconies. Small shops sell bread and tea. This mix is part of the experience here. The building is not separated from the city. It stands in the middle of daily life, as it has for more than seven centuries.

Before you leave, look once more at the striped wall. Find one single brick, and follow its line across the facade. Someone laid it by hand, in an empire that was already counting its last generations. That brick has seen princes, animals, potters and children. Now it sees you. As you walk away, turn back at the corner. The empty windows will catch the light one last time.