Istanbul-Sirkeci (Byzantine church)

Istanbul-Sirkeci (Byzantine church)

In the Sirkeci area of Istanbul few remains from the Byzantine period have survived, but a Middle Byzantine structure, provisionally identified as a church, has been found at the intersection of Ankara Caddesi and Ebusuud Caddesi. It was found during the demolition of modern buildings on the site and had been almost completely destroyed, but the remains have now been preserved in situ. They were examined by Ferudun Özgümüş of Istanbul University, in collaboration with Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

This would have been a large building. The east wall is preserved to over 6 m high and was 1 m thick. It shows the building had three apses at the east end, with the main apse and two pastophoria preserved. The wall has a rubble core faced with four courses of brick and at least one of stone, and was constructed in the style known as "recessed brickwork". This dates it to the 11th or 12th century. In the main apse human remains were found, probably the burial of a priest or patron. Nearly 20 m to the west were traces of brickwork from the west wall, which was almost entirely destroyed by the bulldozers.

The apses, plan and orientation are consistent with this being a Middle Byzantine church. At that time the Sirkeci area was occupied by Italian trading concessions, with the line of Ankara Caddesi dividing the Genoese and Pisan concessions. The church would have been in the Genoese area.

However, the topography of Byzantine Sirkeci is little understood and the identification of the church remains uncertain, although it was a substantial building and so was probably part of one of the complexes noted in historical sources. The work by R. Janin on the Byzantine topography of Constantinople suggests there are a number of possibilities. The monasteries of Theodosiu and Mondila were both located in proximity to the Genoese concession and were built in the 11th-12th centuries, so it is possible the church was part of one of these complexes. There are also a number of churches known to have been in the area, including that of St Michael, which Janin locates in the Sirkeci area somewhere in the vicinity of the present-day railway station.

Bibliography

Ferudun Özgümüş, "A Byzantine church at Sirkeci in Istanbul", Reading Medieval Studies 30 (2004), 1-15