The city of Byzantium in the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

occupies an important place in the history of

garden design Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expertise. ...

between eras and cultures (c. 4th century – 10th century CE). The city, later renamed

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya ( Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis ( ...

(present day

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

), was capital of the

Eastern Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantin ...

and survived for a thousand years after the fall of the

Western Roman Empire The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period ...

. The gardens of Byzantium were, however, mostly destroyed after the 15th-century Turkish conquest of the city.

Design

Byzantine gardens were based largely on Roman ideas emphasizing elaborate Hellenistic

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

designs, a typical classical feature of formally arrayed trees and built elements such as

fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were ori ...

s and small shrines. These gradually grew to become more elaborate as time passed. Byzantine gardens have influenced

Islamic garden An Islamic garden is generally an expressive estate of land that includes themes of water and shade. Their most identifiable architectural design reflects the ''charbagh'' (or ''chahār bāgh'') quadrilateral layout with four smaller gardens di ...

s and particularly Moorish gardens; the latter being because Spain was for centuries a Roman province (and, during the reign of

Justinian the Great Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized '' renova ...

, a Byzantine province as well).

Study

Little else is known about Eastern Roman gardens and very few references, let alone entire treatises, exist on the subject. The Eastern Romans, like their Greco-Roman predecessors, attached great importance to matters of

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

. However, ancient

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

gardens were more developed and better documented.

Later Greek rule

During the last 250 years of Greek rule ending in 1453, conditions drastically curtailed the tradition, which stretched back to Hellenistic times, of building luxurious villas, mostly outside the cities, with pleasing gardens, as appear in mosaics and frescoes or are recorded in texts. This period seems to have been less thoroughly investigated than have most earlier periods, and a concentration on it should produce a more coherent picture than another attempt to cover the whole span of Byzantine history.

References

Notes

Bibliography

*''Byzantine Garden Culture,'' edited by Antony Littlewood, Henry Maguire, and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (2002) *''Byzantine Gardens and Beyond,'' edited by Helena Bodin and Ragnar Hedlund (2013) *Veronica della Dora'', Landscape, Nature, and the Sacred in Byzantium'' (2016) *

External links

Marie-Luise Gothein: History of Byzantine Gardens''Byzantine Garden Culture'', Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

Gardens A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

Types of garden by country of origin

History of Turkey {{Byzantine-stub