Byzantine and Romanesque architecture . e great Palace of Bla-chernae, of which nothing now remains but some curiousvaulted substructures near the tower which contains thesupposed prison of Anemas. The Tekfur Serai (Plate XXIII) is a rectangularbuilding originally three storeys high, which has lostits floors, and is remarkable for the decoration of thefa9ade towards what was once an interior court of thepalace. The spandrils of the windows are filled withgeometrical patterns made of squares and strips of whitemarble, and thin bricks placed edgeways, or cut intotriangles and squares (Fig. 35).
Byzantine and Romanesque architecture . e great Palace of Bla-chernae, of which nothing now remains but some curiousvaulted substructures near the tower which contains thesupposed prison of Anemas. The Tekfur Serai (Plate XXIII) is a rectangularbuilding originally three storeys high, which has lostits floors, and is remarkable for the decoration of thefa9ade towards what was once an interior court of thepalace. The spandrils of the windows are filled withgeometrical patterns made of squares and strips of whitemarble, and thin bricks placed edgeways, or cut intotriangles and squares (Fig. 35). A band of the samedivides the two upper storeys, and the arches have lightand dark voussoirs of stone and brick alternately. Bandsof brickwork through the masonry elsewhere completea very effective polychromatic design. The windowswere partly tilled in with a marble tympanum, whichremains in a few cases only. From its style the buildingmight be assigned to any date from the loth to the12th century, and the tradition which assigns it to. CH. ix] LATER BYZANTINE BUILDINGS 141 Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912-958) may possiblybe correct, though I should be disposed to date it ratherlater. It is not likely at all events that such a buildingwould have been erected after the desolating conquestof the Empire by the Crusaders in 1204. Constantinople never recovered the blow given by The Latinthe Latin conquest, and during the 200 years that elapsed i^nhr4thbetween the return of the Palaeologi and the taking of ^^^^^^^the city by the Moslems, the boundaries of the Empiregradually shrank till little remained but the town itself,
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjacksont, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
