Istanbul Turkey - Full Day
April 30, 2023
Full day in the old city section of Istanbul, with all of our site from the era when Istanbul was Constantinople and was the Eastern locus of Christianity.
First stop was the Topkapi Palace complex which was the seat of the Ottoman Empire from 1460 until 1856. All the governmental administrative functions happened here and it was the home of the sultans and their extensive family/harems and caretakers. This is the time period when all of the very early Christian churches in Istanbul began to be converted into mosques.
The Hagia Irene (“Holy Peace”) church sits in the first courtyard of the Topkopi Palace grounds and is the only Byzantine era church not converted to a Mosque. It was built at nearly the same time as the Hagia Sophia. It was completed in 360 AD. The Interior has one very large fresco left in the Apse of a cross. The curve or apse has two bible verses inscribe among the leaves of the border design and among the geometric shapes; Amos 6:6 and Psalm 64:4-5.
Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”) was built at nearly the same time as Hagia Irene but has now been converted into a mosque. The original building was completed in 360 AD. The picture show some of the Christian symbols still existing in the church. The black and white tile of a cross on a dome over a church filled with a cross is high above the Grand Entrance and we completely missed it last visit. The enormous baptismal font was a gift from Pergamon which we will visit later this trip. A fresco over a door depicts Mary and infant Jesus with Justinian holding the Hagia Sophia on the left and Constantine holding the walls of Constantinople on the right.
We also looked into the blue mosque which gets this Americanized name from the gorgeous blue tile work. Other than that it was less interesting to us as it has never been a church and is much newer construction (1609).
The Basilica Cisterns were open for visitors and were amazing! Istanbul has many of these cistern, with this one being one of the largest. You can see that it was constructed using spoils from more ancient Roman construction… repurposed columns and capitals… giant carved Medusa heads. A pretty and slightly creepy place!
The basilica that once stood above the cistern and had a monumental gate with a Roman mile marker: the Milion. The Milion was mile marker zero of the Byzantine empire with distances across the Eastern domaine measured from this point.
The ancient hippodrome is now a huge plaza with 2 obelisks. One from Egyptian Pharoh Tutmoses III in 1450 BC . There is a broken bronze serpent statue originally from Delphi constructed around 480 BC. When Constantine was setting up Constantinople as a new seat of the empire, this servant column was moved to Constantinople. The snakes heads , three of them, broke off. We saw one of them in the Archeological museum today.
Much of the archeological museum is under renovation and we sadly missed seeing quite a few things on our list there.
In between all of these sites, great food, lots of walking, learning the trolley system, and feeling a little overwhelmed by a city of 15 million!!
Tomorrow an early start to the Dardanelles where we will cross over to the ancient Troad area to visit Alexander Troas and Assos - our first biblical sites!
