Description
Several literary descriptions of the gate survive. Procopius is the earliest and most prominent source, but accounts of the statues decorating the gatehouse's façade also come from the later Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai.
Justinian's Chalke was a rectangular building, with four engaged piers supporting a central dome on pendentives, which in turn rested on four barrel arches in the typical Byzantine fashion. The piers to the south and north were somewhat lower than those to the east and west. The central structure was adjoined by two smaller chambers on either side to the south and north, each again featuring a vaulted roof. The relation of the Church of Christ Chalkites with the gate is unclear; Cyril Mango suggested that it was located to its left, but it has also been proposed that it was actually built atop the gatehouse itself. It is known that the chapel was placed atop an elevated platform, and 18th-century depictions locate it some 100 m southeast of the Hagia Sophia.
The vestibule's interior decoration is also described by Procopius: the walls were decorated with slabs of multi-colored marble, while the ceilings were covered with mosaics, which depicted Justinian and his empress Theodora flanked by the Senate, as well as the victories of Belisarius in the Vandalic and Gothic wars and his triumphal return bearing spoils, defeated kings and kingdoms to his emperor.
The external decoration is comparatively unknown, but the Parastaseis syntomoi record the existence of various statues, probably placed in niches above the central doorway. These included Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) and his wife and children, a pair of statues of philosophers taken from Athens, stretching their arms towards one another, statues of Emperor Zeno (r. 474–491) and Empress Ariadne, as well as four gorgon heads from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus that "surround the Chalke with the sign of the cross above them". The same text also records that statues of Emperor Maximian (r. 285–305) and the entire House of Theodosius were located "nearby", while the exact location of a statue of Empress Pulcheria in relation to the building is unclear. Cyril Mango, who studied the problem of the statuary recorded in the Parastaseis, concluded that the references came from a text written in ca. 600 – in great part because the images of Emperor Maurice and his family are unlikely to have survived their overthrow and murder by Phocas in 602.
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