There were too many buildings in the Great Palace to tell you about all of them. Among them was the Daphne Palace. It was the oldest one, having been built by Constantine the Great when he founded the city. There was the Building of the Nineteen Beds where the emperor could hold a state dinner for 218 important people. Another building was the Chalké where the emperor received his parade troops. It was 650 feet long, and in the old days it was guarded by Khazars with drawn bows. It got its name because its roof was a huge sheet of polished copper. A fourth building was the Magnaura, or Fresh Breeze, Palace where the empress went in stately procession to take her ceremonial baths. It was at the Magnaura Palace that an Italian visitor discovered what the Byzantines would do to impress strangers. Liutprand, the bishop of Cremona, was led before the emperor, whom he found seated upon a golden throne. There he was told to bow himself three times, each time with his face to the ground. He did so; then he looked up. No emperor. By a clever device, the latter had been lifted to the ceiling, and now clad in entirely new clothes, he looked down upon the bishop. In the meantime, gilded mechanical birds began to sing, and gilded bronze lions beat the ground with their tails and roared terribly with open mouth and quivering tongues. Part of the palace group, too, was the renowned church of Santa Sophia. It was known as the Great Church, and although it was not as big as Saint Peter’s in Rome, it was one of the largest sacred buildings ever made by man. Even today, with most of its mosaics covered with whitewash—this was done by the Turks—it is like nothing else in the world. To Robert of Clari, its great height, equivalent to a modern eighteen-story building, its many chapels, its lacelike balconies, and its beautifully carved pillars made it like the work of an enchanter. Its dome was so vast that the architects had to try twice before they could make one that would not fall down. When they did, it was so graceful that it seemed to be floating on air. [Illustration: Byzantium city] But what impressed Robert of Clari most of all was its more-than-Oriental splendor. The principal altar was beyond price, he said. The altar table was 14 feet long. It was made of gold and precious stones crushed up together. Above it was a solid silver canopy held up by solid silver columns. The whole ceiling was overlaid with pure gold. Robert did not even speak of the mosaics which we now know were as fine as any ever made, but he did say that there were more than 200 chandeliers. Each of these had twenty-five or more lamps, and was hung from a silver chain as thick as a man’s arm.