Once out of sight of the massive shipyards, Tuzla is revealed as a rather lovely seaside town. Two of the major streets close to the coast are named Manastır Caddesi and Papaz Çeşme Sokak. These promise rather more than they deliver. The visible remains comprise the foundations and lower wall of a rectangular building, hard against an IETT bus stop (40.817735,29.30132). This seems to have been the ayazma. The presence of undeveloped land surrounding it may be an indication that further traces of an extensive monastery cover a wide area.
On an island a few hundred metres off the coast of Tuzla are the well-preserved remains of the Byzantine Church of St. Glykeria (Hagia Glykeria Nesos, 40.791212,29.274938). However, the island is owned by Rahmi Koç and this limits access somewhat. The island may once have been called Incirli Adası but now is invariably called Koç Adası. There is some information here.
Posted June 25, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
Library of Halki Theological College, Heybeliada
These are just the sorts of places where hermits like to build stone huts to assert their holiness. These were followed by monks who left traces of monasteries not only on the four major islands – Büyükada (Prinkipo or Pityades Megale), Heybeliada (Halki or Halkitis), Burgazada (Antigone) and Kınalıada (Proti) – but also any other bits of rock that could be colonised – Sivri (Oxya), Yassı (Plateia or Rhodussa), Sedef (Antherovitos or Terebinthodes), Tavşanlı (Neandros) and Kaşık (Pita or Pygos). These days, anyone going to the four main islands would hardly be escaping to the isolation essential for divine contemplation.
There is a lot of Constantinople under the surfaces of the main islands. Most of it is well hidden. Click on the following pictures for detail about the four main islands
1. Büyükada/Prinkipo
2. Heybeliada/Halki
3. Burgazada/Antigone
4. Kınalıada/Proti
Heybeliada, Halki Theological College
There are bits of wall on the other islands that may be identified as Byzantine if you want to take a wild guess. I have not yet taken the step of commandeering a boat to go to the small islands. The lack of residents and visitors probably mean that more remains of the less that was once on them.
Monastery on Tavşanlı (from Erdenen, Orhan: İstanbul Adaları)
Just off the coast of Tuzla is an island owned by Rahmi Koç. This is luxuriously appointed with all of the accoutrements that one would expect of a billionaire’s hideaway – a pool, a mansion and a Byzantine church (40.791212,29.274938). I am not yet a close enough friend of Rahmi Bey to have been invited to the island to obtain a better quality photograph of the church. If you are reading this, Rahmi Bey, I would also like to speak to you about steam locomotives that have recently vanished from Halkalı and Çankırı.
My best view of the Church of St Glykeria
Posted June 25, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
Columns and capitals from the Church of St John the Baptist
Bakırköy is inextricably linked in Istanbul’s collective mind with the presence of a psychiatric hospital but was a desirable residential seaside location throughout most of the twentieth century. Long before that, it was a thriving Byzantine suburb seven (hebdomon means seventh) miles from the Milion, the marker of the centre of Constantinople. Ebuzzıya Caddesi turns out to be a pleasant shopping street with an Armenian and a Greek church (41.977345,28.874812). The Greek one is the successor to a Byzantine Church of St John the Evangelist. There was uproar a few years ago when a road-widening meant that the narthex of this church was demolished. Its place is now (2014) taken by a rather nasty littl e wooden structure. Still, go ahead and light a candle.
The much larger Church of John the Baptist was in a location (40.979215, 28.882061) now on Istanbul Caddesi. Here, the hand and occipital bone of the Christener of Christ were once kept, despite the existence elsewhere of several intact heads of the saint. Umberto Eco made much sport of the proliferation of Baptist heads in his novel Baudolino. The relics from the Church of John the Baptist are now in Topkapı Sarayı, displayed with appropriate solemnity.
1990 photo of the relics of John the Baptist in Topkapı Sarayı
This was the church in which Byzantine emperors were crowned before entering the city in triumph through the Golden Gate. Mamboury reported that significant remains of the church were visible in the 1950s. These disappeared underneath housing. The octagonal Byzantine church of St John the Baptist was discovered when the site of the SSK hospital (41.979183,28.881252) was being excavated. However, the hospital is not terribly photogenic.
This picture shows the remains of the Church of John the Baptist in 1960, just before they were destroyed to build the SSK Çocuk Hastanesi on Istanbul Caddesi.
Campus Tribunalis was a military complex built in the 4th century by Emperor Valentinian I. It served as the mustering ground for troops before and after campaigns in Thrace and beyond. It was famously extravagant for an army barracks and had swimming pools, baths and churches. Now it is an industrial zone and site of the Veliefendi Hippodrome, which charges 2 lira for men and 1 lira for women to watch horse races. There is one remaining Byzantine wall (40.981580, 28.885616) which is now part of a police parking area for impounded cars. Until a few years ago there was a small but intact Byzantine building near the police karakol. Now, like the karakol, it is gone. Massive building work in 2015 threatens the few remaining Byzantine stones.
A section of Byzantine foundations (40.981147, 28.886185) has been preserved among the construction. The security staff told me that it was the Hebdomon Palace but they wouldn’t let me in to see. I had to take photos over the fence.
Eastern end of the foundations
‘Hebdomon Palace’ foundations, November 2015
Byzantine wall at Campus Tribunalis
Arches in the wall near Veliefendi Hipodromu
In the Bakırköy area, the major Byzantine sites seem to have hospitals built on them. For Campus Tribunalis, the medical successor is Kızılay Ahmet Bahadırlı Tıp Merkezi, on the coast road. In the excavations to build the foundations for the hospital, a number of ecclesiastical-looking architectural fragments were unearthed. These are now on display in an area of the garden where nobody goes (40.979188, 28.886262). One of these fragments is grandly called a Roman Mortarium in the literature. Slightly disappointingly, this turns out to be a dished stone used for grinding grains and herbs.
Fifth century capital and mortarium
Columns and capitals from Campus Tribunalis
Another hospital, Bakırköy Akıl ve Sinir Hastalıkları Hastanesi was built over a Byzantine hypogeum, a sort of subterranean church built as a cemetery. Some remnants are in a circular park in the centre of the hospital grounds (40.991168, 28.862196). They include a bathtub sarcophagus and some 6th century column capitals. The remains of the hypogeum itself seem to be popular with parkour enthusiasts.
The hypogeum was rediscovered in 1914 during construction work for barracks at the start of World War I. After the war, the French occupying troops were pressed into service as excavators. The triumph of the Turkish republicans meant the exit of the French in 1923, leaving the investigation unfinished. I am not sure that any real archaeological work has been done since. The site has almost disappeared again but the basic structure is still discernible.
It is a 5th century circular building, shaped into a cross by four naves. The resulting quarters formed pillars that supported a dome. In the opposite walls of each pillar were arched tombs for a sarcophagus. Around the outside of the whole structure was a narrow circular passage, still accessible and in good condition. Sarcophagi were found in six of the eight niches. One was claimed to be that of Emperor Basil II, something of a hero to the recently victorious Turks. Basil ruled from 976 to 1025 and defeated the Bulgarian forces who had threatened the area to the west of Constantinople for centuries. By the time the hypogeum was excavated, he was popularly known as the Bulgar-slayer. The time was right for a shrine to a nationalist hero, even though there was no evidence that his body had ever been placed there. The legend of Basil’s burial place, like the site itself, crumbled back into oblivion.
Western nave. Niche at left faces another (under ivy at right). Entrance to circular passage to the right of the tree.
West-facing niche on southern nave.
Looking west from the eastern rim of the church. On the left is the north-west pillar. One of the niches can be seen at lower left.
Niche for sarcophagus in north-west pillar, facing onto the western nave. At the back, the passage turns at right angles to form the niche facing the northern nave.
The circular passageway surrounding the main structure.
Sarcophagus and capitals from the Hypogeum
Truncated Church of St George in Bakırköy
Headstones in the Church of St George, Bakırköy
Mosaic from Church of St John, Archaeological Museum of Istanbul
Fildamı Sarnıcı, the massive cistern near Bakırköy where the Sultan allegedly once kept his elephants.
This cistern once provided the water for the Hebdomon area. This part at the south-west corner was a pressure tower where water was allowed to rise from the cistern for distribution.
Part of the cistern near the current entrance. It looks a little like the Church of St Saviour Philanthropes, which is embedded in the sea walls.
View of the north wall of the western entrance to the Martyrion At left is a niche, at right is the brickwork over the ambulatory passage. June 2017
Posted June 25, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
A Victorian oddity with a nice collection of Byzantine stonework acquired from Constantinople in the latter years of the 19th century by lawyers and amateur archaeologists Dr Edwin Freshfield and Sir Henry Cosmo Orne Bosnor. According to the man who let me into the church, Freshfield and Bosnor panted up to their parish church of St Andrew, presented their collection and said, “Look what we have for you”. On finding that their treasures were not wanted there, they engaged Sidney Barnsley to build them a Byzantine church to put them in. It’s a peculiar place – marbled like Aya Sofya, with an apse like a gold-mosaic Aya Irini and with column capitals dotted incongruously within. It has the most marvellous arts-and-crafts ceiling. ‘Eccentric’ is the word to use. (51.269143, -0.211640)
Column capitals from Blachernae Church, Boğdan Sarayı, the Monastery of St John of Studion and the Basilica of St John, Selçuk.
Column capital from the Church of Blachernae.
That wooden, barrel-vaulted ceiling is probably the church's most tasteful feature
Posted June 25, 2014 Posted by Adam in Uncategorized
This is where it all began. Envy of the dome inspired the architects and, more so, the greedy, grasping, exhibitionistic emperors to equal and outdo the glory of the Pantheon. So here it is, not a Byzantine church but the prototype of the Byzantine style. (41.898955,12.476799)
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