Prosphorion Harbour

The Prosphorion Harbour (Greek: Προσφόριον) was a harbour in the city of Constantinople, active from the time when the city was still the Greek colony of Byzantium (657 BC – 324 AD), until the eve of the first millennium. Gradually enlarged, it was the first port to be built in the area of the future Constantinople.

The harbour lay on the southern shore of the Golden Horn, east of today's Galata Bridge, in the fifth region of Constantinople, where the sea walls made a deep nick, in correspondence of the Byzantine Gate of Eugenius (the Ottoman Yalıköşkü kapısı), and extended successively westwards, finally occupying the first inlet after the estuary entrance. The inlet where the basin once lay is now silted up, and corresponds today to the east part of the Sirkeci railway station area, south of the Ottoman Sepetçiler köşkü. Administratively, the site belongs to the Mahalle of Hoca Paşa in Eminönü, which is part of the Fatih district (the walled city) of Istanbul.

The first harbour to be built in Constantinople's area during the time when it was the city-state of Byzantium lay on the Golden Horn, at the entrance of the Bosporus, in the angle formed by the sea and the end of Byzantium's walls, corresponding with the future Byzantine quarter named "ta Eugeniou" (Greek: τὰ Εὑγενίου) after the Gate of Eugenius of the sea wall (the Ottoman Yaliköşkü kapısı). Its position lay immediately under the northwest slope of the first hill of the city. Thanks to its location along the southern shore of the Golden Horn, the harbour was protected from the heavy storms provoked by the Lodos, the south-west wind blowing from the Marmara Sea. After the reconstruction of Byzantium following its destruction under Septimius Severus (r. 193–211), the harbour grew to the west, finally enclosing the whole area today occupied by the Sirkeci railway station and its dependencies. The first landing place to be met at the east, possibly lying near the Gate of Eugenius, was named after Timasius (d. 396), a high officer active under Emperors Valens (r. 364–378) and Theodosius I (r. 379–395). Right after the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 324, the port received the name of "closed harbour" (Greek: κλειστός λιμήν, kleistos limen) since it was protected by moles and defended by the sea walls and by the Tower of Eugenius.

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Wikipedia