This takes persistence to find. The location is a piece of open land, clearly with a preservation order because any gecekondu building activity has been swiftly demolished. Hence it serves as a rubbish dump for the surrounding houses and businesses (41027507,28.95476).
In the furthest recesses of this wasteland is a jungle of fig trees and Virginia Creeper. Beneath this is a section of intricately patterned, unmistakeably Byzantine, brickwork. It is the curved eastern wall of the apse of a church that, after the conquest, became Sinan Paşa Mescidi.
Paspates reported in the 1870s that there was a good deal of the church remaining. Now it is difficult to see that there was a building there at all. If you must go and see it, do so in winter when the rubbish smells less and there are fewer leaves obscuring the remains.
Late January 2015. A lot more wall to be seen in winter.
The structure of an apse is clear when the leaves have gone.
A buried archway under centuries of garbage
The remains are surrounded by houses.
This vault was open as of August 2015
In July 2019, the site is securely fenced off and in use for eskici storage and rubbish dumping.
The outside of the vault has been exposed
The new excavations that reveal the eastern elevation of the vaults appear to have little to do with archaeology. However, the arches are no longer used for storage. I’ll keep an irregular eye on it.
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