To protect the holy city of Constantinople, the emperors of Byzantium built the largest city walls in all the world. Armies that controlled the lives of millions rode from these gates, and through them passed the producer of an empire.

 

“The whole history of this city is in this gate, the great golden gate of Imperial Byzantium. You see that great high span at the top. That was once open to the skies. For 600 years emperors and armies rode through that gate in triumph, coming back from wars against the Persians, the Arabs, the Bulgarians, the Russians. Then there was an earthquake, the gate was blocked, and that final gate at the bottom, that even a cavalryman couldn’t come through on a horse, that gate was built in the final years of Byzantium. So this is a magic gate, it’s a gate of legends; they say its wooden doors were covered with sheets of gold to give the gate its name. They say that the very last emperor killed fighting on these walls is buried beneath these stones, waiting for a call to take the city once again. So it’s a gate of legend, but above all it speaks of imperial Byzantine power.

 

“Power has controlled innumerable lives. You know there are thousands of blocks in this gate, and each one of them, each tiny mark upon them, made by an individual human hand, endless lives absorbed in making millions of these blocks, enough to build the whole city of Constantinople. Now this snowy marble, strange grey lines running through, is found all over the Byzantium Empire, from Spain, to Syria and back to Constantinople. But it comes from one island only, one tiny island in the sea.