Build the house of assembly long, with its head toward the east and rooms for the clergy on either side of the east end; seat the bishop in the middle of the head with his presbyters about him, and the people in order down its length.
Rules · Cities · Use · Ornament
The square before the palace
Before the palace gate make a square ringed by public buildings (the Great Church, the senate house, the palace vestibule), and set in it a column carrying the emperor, facing east toward the empire’s enemies.
Procopius describes the Augustaion, the square between Hagia Sophia and the palace, and the bronze-clad column Justinian set up there: on it the emperor on horseback, dressed as Achilles, facing east, a globe with a cross in his left hand and his right hand raised toward the east to bid the Persians stay where they are. The Chalke, the domed vestibule of the palace, faced the square from the south.
The arrangement of church, palace gate, senate and monumental column round one square at the head of the main street made the square the stage of imperial ceremony, and it was copied in miniature in provincial capitals. Constantine’s own porphyry column stood at the centre of his round forum further along the Mese.
Related rules
Repair the public buildings of the city before beginning new ones; and pull down the booths, sheds and houses that private people build into the public porticoes or against the walls of public buildings.
Leave at least twelve feet between a new house and its neighbour; build no balcony lower than fifteen feet from the ground or nearer than ten feet to the house opposite; do not block a neighbour’s view of the sea within a hundred feet; and keep the shops between the columns of the great porticoes small and faced with marble.
gap ≥ 12 ft (≈ 3.7 m) · balcony ≥ 15 ft up, ≥ 10 ft apart · sea view protected within 100 ft
Assign each guild its quarter: the silversmiths to work in their shops on the Mese in full view; the perfumers to keep their stalls between the Milion and the Chalke gate, so that their fragrance rises to the holy image over the gate and fills the palace porches; the livestock trades to the outer fora.
Set ovens, baths, kilns, dyers, fullers, tanners and threshing floors at a fixed distance from their neighbours’ houses, and where the wind will not carry their smoke, smell or chaff into them.
Raise the principal church of the capital on its highest ground at the head of the city, so that it rises above the houses like a ship riding the waves and is seen from the sea on every side.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The square before the palace”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/procopius-augustaion. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.