Verd antique is used like marble especially in interior decoration and occasionally as outdoor trim, although the masses are frequently jointed and often only small slabs can be secured. The ancient Romans quarried it especially at
Casambala, near Larissa,
Thessaly, in
Greece. This variety was known as
marmor thessalicum or Thessalian marble. In Diocletian's
Edict on Maximum Prices, Thessalian marble was priced at 150
denarii per cubic
foot - more expensive than the valuable Egyptian grey granite of
Mons Claudianus, known as
granito del foro, and red granite of
Aswan, called
lapis syenites, higher priced than
cipollino from
Carystus, and exceeded only in value by
Synnadic or Docimaean marble from
Docimium, porphyritic green
lapis Lacedaemonius from
Laconia, and
imperial porphyry from
Mons Porphyrites. Green
Thessalicum was three times the price of grey-white marble from
Thassos. Verd antique was much used by the monumental builders of the
Byzantine Empire and by the
Ottomans after them; columns and revetments of
verde antico are common in
Istanbul's monuments, many inherited from the city's time as
Constantinople. The
Justinianic Hagia Sophia,
Church of SS. Sergius & Bacchus,
Church of Hagios Polyeuctus, the
Monastery of Saint John Prodromos at Stoudios, and the
Church of the Holy Apostles all used
marmor thessalicum extensively, including large monolithic columns. The Justinianic
San Vitale at Ravenna also employs Thessalian columns. Verd antique from Larissa was used in the fifth-century churches of
Thessaloniki. Columns,
ambons,
iconostasis, and
fonts of verd antique are found in the
Church of the Acheiropoietos,
Hagios Demetrios, and
Hagia Sophia, Thessaloniki.
Evliya Çelebi described the green ambo of Hagia Sophia was a ‘rare admirable artistic piece of construction’ ... ‘one of the monuments of the whole world’. This ambo of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki is now in the
Istanbul Archaeology Museum. Another, smaller such ambo exists in the church of Hagios Minas in Thessaloniki, with another sixth-century
Thessalicum ambo discovered among other ecclesiastical stonework in the "Marzamemi shipwreck" off
Sicily. Thessalian marble appeared in the
Monastery of Hosios Loukas in
Boeotia, at
Philippi in the A and B Basilicas and the ‘Octagon’, and in
basilicae at
Amphipolis, on
Thasos, in
Dion, in the cathedral at
Stobi, at
Kato Milia in
Pieria, at
Stagoi, and
Saint John's at Ephesus. In ancient
Neapolis, a Thessalian stone outside a church dedicated to
Saint Nicholas is said to mark where the
Apostle Paul disembarked for Philippi.
ʿAbd al-Malik's Dome of the Rock,
ʿAbd ar-Raḥman I's Grand Mosque of Córdoba, and
Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel at Aachen all used Thessalian verd antique. The
Cappella Corsini of
Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, and
Santa Maria Maggiore and
Santa Susanna in Rome all have verd antique decoration. Thirteen Roman imperial
sarcophagi of the Byzantine period were of verd antique, according to the
Patria Constantinopoleos and the works of
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Nine emperors and eight other imperial figures, mostly empresses, are known to have been buried in such sarcophagi.
Zeno,
Justin II,
Constantine V,
Michael I Rangabe,
Theophilus and his co-emperor son
Constantine,
Michael III,
Basil I, and
Alexander were all entombed in this way. Such sarcophagi are found today in Hagia Sophia and in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Subsequently, many Ottoman mosques incorporated verd antique columns and other material, as at the
Süleymaniye Mosque. ==Connemara marble==