A description of Comnenian Constantinople:

When the French forces of the Fourth Crusade caught their first sight of Constantinople, what impressed them besides the city's «high walls and lofty towers» were its «rich palaces and tall churches». Apart from obvious ancient monuments like the main structures in the Great Palace, the major public churches and a few monastic ones, it is likely that most of the palaces and churches visible in 1203 had acquired their appearance in the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, and that the skyline and the shoreline were dominated by monuments to the century of Comnenian greatness. Approaching the Bosporos from the Sea of Marmara, seafarers might see, behind the sea walls and the Stoudios monastery, the palaces of the Angelos family, the monastery of St. Mamas, restored in Manuel's reign, and the family monastery of Aristenoi. Further along they would see the house of Andronikos Komnenos at Vlanga, near the Palaiologan family monastery of St. Demetrios, followed by the palace of the sebastokrator Isaac near the old harbour of Sophiae. Leaving the Great Palace behind them as they entered the Bosporos, they would pass the Mangana and the Orphanotropheion. Rounding the promontory and sailing up the Golden Horn, they would see a series of Comnenian-sponsored buildings up to and including the Blachernae Palace: the palace of Botaneiates or Kalamanos, the palace of a sebastokrator, the palace complex which Alexios I's nephew John converted into the monastery of Christ Evergetes, John II's monastery of the Pantokrator, his grandmother's monastery of Christ Pantepoptes and his mother's and father's monasteries of the Theotokos Kecharitomene and Christ Philanthropos.

Magdalino, P., The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos 1143-1180 (Cambridge Univ. Press 2002), p. 119.

Lavish private residenses in Komnenian Constantinople:

The imperial foundations of Alexios represented only a part of the impact that his reign made on the physical appearance of Constantinople. Alexios was strongly criticised for having enriched 'his relatives and certain of his servants' to such an extent 'that they were able... to acquire dwellings resembling cities in magnitude, and in magnificence in no way dissimilar to imperial palaces' [Zonaras III, p. 767]. When due allowance has been made for the bias and exaggeration in these remarks, there is no reason to doubt that the regime instituted by Alexios Komnenos resulted in the growth of princely oikoi on an almost unprecedented scale, although whether these occupied new sites, as opposed to existing residences, is far from clear [the palaces of the sebastokrator Isaac at Sophiae and of Kalamanos/Botaneiates might be examples of reoccupied premises].

Magdalino, P., The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos 1143-1180 (Cambridge Univ. Press 2002), p. 116.