Great Palace Mosaics Museum, Istanbul

Tucked just behind the majestic Blue Mosque — or actually under it — the Museum of Great Palace Mosaics is one of Istanbul’s best surprises waiting beneath your feet. Hidden below the Arasta Bazaar, this two-level gallery shelters what was once the glittering floor of the Byzantine Great Palace. If you’ve already swooned over the mosaics in Hagia Sophia or the Chora Church, brace yourself: there’s more ancient eye-candy down here.

These mosaics may have lost their palace, but not their flair. Crafted around 450–550 AD, about 40,000 tiny pieces of limestone, earthenware, and colorful stone once covered a sprawling (over 1,800-square-meter) courtyard in Constantine the Great’s imperial residence — centuries before the Ottomans thought up the Blue Mosque next door.

In the 7th and 8th centuries, when painting was frowned upon, the entire mosaic carpet was buried under heavy marble slabs and sealed away (like a time capsule nobody remembered). Under the Ottomans, the palaces were moved to the Golden Horn (to avoid potential threat from the sea), and later the entire neighborhood was turned into a residential district. They unknowingly built homes right over this ancient masterpiece, and everyone just walked on top of it for centuries, completely oblivious.

It wasn't until 1921, when a fire ripped through the area, that the excavation works that followed cracked the ground open, and suddenly — surprise! — a forgotten palace floor showed up. Archaeologists, mostly from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, spent decades (from 1935 to 1951) carefully unearthing it, piecing together the world’s most precious jigsaw puzzle.

Today, the mosaics remain almost exactly where they were rediscovered, still bursting with life. You’ll meet more than 150 figures: hunters chasing wild beasts, kids riding exotic animals, mythological characters acting dramatic — basically, a highly illustrated Byzantine “Instagram” feed...

Finally granted museum status in 1997, this site is one of Istanbul’s most exciting archaeological wins of the modern era — and a thrilling reminder that in this city, history isn’t just around every corner… sometimes it’s right under your very shoes.