Great Palace Mosaic Museum

This museum displays a magnificent floor mosaic that once paved a peristyle courtyard of the Great Palace of the Byzantine emperors, preserved in situ near the Arasta Bazaar behind the Blue Mosque. Dating from the sixth century, the mosaic teems with vivid scenes of hunting, rural life, animals and mythological creatures against a plain ground. The surviving fragment, though only part of the original vast pavement, ranks among the finest secular mosaics of late antiquity. Raised walkways let visitors study its lively figures.