Byzantine Churches in Constantinople

of the promontory, stand the historic towns of Chrysopolis
(Scutari) and Chalcedon (Kadikeui). The mainland to the
west is an undulating plain that soon meets the horizon. It
offers little to attract the eye in the way of natural beauty,
but in the palmy days of the city it, doubtless, presented a
pleasing landscape of villas and gardens.

The promontory, though strictly speaking a trapezium, is
commonly described as a triangle, on account of the com-
parative shortness of its eastern side. It is about four miles
long, and from one to four miles wide, with a surface broken
up into hills and plains. The higher ground, which reaches an
elevation of some 250 feet, is massed in two divisions—a large
isolated hill at the south-western corner of the promontory,
and a long ridge, divided, more or less completely, by five
cross valleys into six distinct eminences, overhanging the Golden
Horn. Thus, New Rome boasted of being enthroned upon as
many hills beside the Bosporus, as her elder sister beside the
Tiber.

The two masses of elevated land just described are sepa-
rated by a broad meadow, through which the stream of the
Lycus flows athwart the promontory into the Sea of Marmora;
and there is, moreover, a considerable extent of level land along
the shores of the promontory, and in the valleys between the
northern hills.

Few of the hills of Constantinople were known by special
names, and accordingly, as a convenient mode of reference,
they are usually distinguished by numerals.

The First Hill is the one nearest the promontory’s apex,
having upon it the Seraglio, St. Irene, St. Sophia, and the
Hippodrome. The Second Hill, divided from the First by the
valley descending from St. Sophia to the Golden Horn, bears
upon its summit the porphyry Column of Constantine the