Kariye Istanbul one of the world’s greatest museums

The Kariye Museum in Istanbul, Turkey is listed among the top 30 must-see museums in the world.

A recent article includes the Kariye Museum in Istanbul among the top 30 must-see museums in the world.
Patricia Schultz, author of the book, “1,000 Places to See Before You Die.” ranks The Kariye Museum in Istanbul alongside such internationally celebrated art museums as The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain; The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia; Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam; and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The Kariye Museum also known as the Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, this often-overlooked museum began as a chapel or church built as early as the fifth century, after which it flourished as a mosque during the time of the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul.

Kariye Museum in Istanbul is, after Hagia Sophia, the most important Byzantine monument in Istanbul, Turkey. The interior of the building is covered with fine mosaics and frescoes.

After the Turkish conquest in 1453, the church remained as it is for a time, and was turned into a mosque in 1511 by addition of a minaret. Then it became a museum in 1948 and its frescoes and mosaics were cleaned.

The majority of the current building was built in the late 11th century with lots of repairs and restructuring in the following centuries. It was dedicated to Christ the Savior. The interior of the building is covered with wonderful mosaics and frescoes, illustrating scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Surprisingly few of the tourists that fill Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque visit Kariye.

Nearby you can find atmospheric cafes and historic Ottoman houses in the shadow of the city’s fifth century walls.
The Kariye Museum, however, isn’t the only unique museum on the list. Among the 30 selected by Schultz are such unusual institutions as the National Archeological Museum in Naples, Italy, and The International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

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Thomas Whittemore has been chipping away plaster walls off for 14 years.

From Time –  Jan. 27, 1947,

Glory be to God, who hath thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work; 1 have vanquished thee, O Solomon!

This was the proud thanksgiving uttered by Justinian the Great at the dedication of the church of St. Sophia (“Divine Wisdom”) in Constantinople 14 centuries ago. Justinian had something to crow about; “compared with the formation of the vilest insect,” as Historian Edward Gibbon pointed out, the church might be dull and insignificant, but the peak of its interior is one of the Highest in the world (180 feet) and as art, St. Sophia doubtless surpassed Solomon’s temple. Among the church’s beauties, noted Gibbon, were “a variety of ornaments and figures . . . curiously expressed in mosaic; and the images of Christ, of the Virgin, of saints, and of angels, which have been defaced by Turkish fanaticism. . . .”

Last week Boston Archeologist Thomas Whittemore returned home from Istanbul, with proof that the conquering Moslems had not been guilty of defacing, only of concealing, St. Sophia’s Christian mosaics. Whittemore, a spry, enthusiastic bachelor of 76, and director of Boston’s well-heeled Byzantine Institute, has been chipping away at the church’s plaster walls off & on for the past 14 years.

He had won the approval of Turkey’s late President Kamal Atatürk for the project. At first, because the church was in use as a mosque, Whittemore and his assistants had to take Fridays and Moslem prayer hours off. But in 1935 the Turkish Government made St. Sophia a public monument, and since then work has proceeded on a businesslike 9-to-5 schedule (except for winter months, when the place gets too chilly to work in). Whittemore went right on chipping through the war.

Under the plaster he has discovered close to a thousand years of history—in silver, gold, marble, and sparkling glass cubes put together into a parade of saints and influential sinners which stretches from 537 to 1453 A.D., when the Turks came marching in.

Among the mosaics already laid bare are portraits of Emperor Leo VI (made about 900 A.D.), Constantine the Great and Justinian II (995), Empress Zoë and Constantine IX (1042), John II Comnenus, Empress Irene, and their son, Alexius (early 12th Century).

Whittemore still has years of chipping ahead, and not much of an idea what he will find next. His men work mostly on scaffoldings high up on the walls. They use no chemicals to dissolve the plaster and paint which the Moslems spread over the murals (the Moslem religion forbids pictures of people or animals, as the Jewish forbids graven images). Whittemore has found it safer to flake off inch by inch with “a small steel chisel, [the kind] used in delicately cleaning fossils.”

Where they have been freed of plaster, St. Sophia’s walls and vaulting seem to dissolve in color. The mosaics, says Whittemore enthusiastically, meet “the vision as if charioted on a billow of light, each with an appeal as thrilling and compelling and personal as it seems possible to experience. The effect as you move past them has the cumulative power of a rising flood, and they engulf you in the religious enthusiasm of Byzantine conviction. . . . We may say of all [the mosaics] that we are in the presence of [works of] metropolitan masters, compared with which the contemporary mosaics in Italy, for instance, are provincial and derived. We have only to look at extant gth Century mosaics in Roman churches and their feeble treatment to assure ourselves that the fountainhead of the art was at Constantinople.”

Throughout the 1,000 years in which they were made, St. Sophia’s mosaics hardly varied in style or excellence. They were made by the best artist of each generation, working in “orchestral” anonymity of the sort that, Scholar Whittemore believes, “life is trying to induce us to return to.”

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Cerrahpasa a forgotten corner of old Istanbul

In a city the size of İstanbul it’s hardly surprising that people can live here for decades and still not have visited every part of it.

What is a little more surprising, however, is to stumble on a part of the old city inside the ancient walls that goes virtually unvisited by foreigners. The area around Edirnekapı used to be a bit like that, but these days a growing number of coach parties pass through on their way to visit the Chora Church (Kariye Museum). The part of town around Cerrahpaşa and Haseki, though, is still completely off-the-beaten-track despite being within easy walking distance of Aksaray.

Historically, this was a very important part of the city, the place where the old slave market used to stand and thus the place where some of the women who rose to power in the Topkapı Palace harem changed hands on their path to the sultan’s bed. But it was also a part of town picked by several dignitaries of the Ottoman court who chose to adorn it with magnificent mosque complexes, some of them by the great architect Mimar Sinan.

To find Cerrahpaşa you need to alight from the tram at Aksaray, cross the busy interchange and look for the 18th-century Ebu Bekir Paşa schoolroom, which now houses a humble teahouse. From there you should head along Namık Kemal Caddesi to find the Cerrahpaşa Cami, which was built in 1593 by Davud Ağa, a pupil of Sinan who succeeded him as chief architect. In the grounds stands the tomb of Cerrah (Surgeon) Paşa, the barber who had the honor of circumcising the future Mehmed III and who was awarded the title of surgeon for his pains.

If you continue along Cerrahpaşa Caddesi and then turn left along Haseki Kadın Sokağı you will come to the enormous Bulgur Palas, built in 1912 in the style known as First National Architecture for Mehmed Habib Bey, who made a fortune in cracked wheat (hence the name) and then went on to become a deputy for Bolu. One of the architects who worked on it was Giulio Mongeri, who was also responsible for St. Anthony’s Church on İstiklal Caddesi as well as for the Maçka Palas building that now houses the Park Hyatt Hotel.

If, instead, you turn right along Haseki Kadın Sokağı you will come to one of the city’s more curious and easily overlooked monuments, namely the Column of Arcadius, erected in his own honor by the Emperor Arcadius in 402. The column was torn down for safety reasons in 1715, which means that only the base survives, squeezed in between a house and a car park. In winter it’s clearly visible, although at this time of year it’s largely obscured by foliage.

Believe it or not, the area around this column where there is now a children’s playground was once the Roman Forum of Arcadius, and then the site of the Avrat Pazarı, or Women’s Slave Market, which survived until 1847. There’s nothing left to show for it today, not even a commemorative plaque, but it’s thought that among the many women to have passed through it were Roxelana, who became the wife of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent and whose beautiful bath complex in Sultanahmet Square is currently under restoration; Kösem Sultan, the wife of Sultan Ahmed I and, as co-regent for her sons and grandson, one of the most powerful of all Ottoman women; and Mihrişah Sultan, the mother of Sultan Selim III.

At the end of Haseki Sultan Sokağı you will come to the Bayrampaşa mosque complex, which is split in two by the road with the mosque on the left-hand side of the road and the medrese (theological seminary) on the right. Bayram Paşa was a grand vizier to Sultan Murad IV, who died during the campaign to recapture Baghdad in 1638 and who gave his name to the area of İstanbul around the Esenler bus station. His tomb is in a very poor state of repair, but a mescid and dervish tekke (lodge) that formed part of the complex now house a women’s clinic.

If you turn left onto Haseki Caddesi you will come to the Haseki Hürrem mosque complex, which was built by Sinan for Roxelana in 1539. It’s the third largest such complex in the city after the Fatih and Süleymaniye models, which makes it all the more remarkable that it is so little known or visited. The mosque itself stands on the left-hand side of the road in a cramped courtyard, but the medrese over the road must once have been magnificent, to judge from the delicate tiled panels removed from above its windows and placed in the İstanbul Archeological Museum for safekeeping. Behind it the imaret (soup kitchen) bristles with chimneys alongside a splendid hospital building. Sadly, none of the complex is actually open to the public, and even the mosque seems reluctant to admit visitors.

A little bit of zigzagging around the back streets will bring you to the older Davutpaşa Cami, which was built for Davud Paşa, a grand vizier to Sultan Beyazıd II, in 1485 and whose tomb stands right beside it. Across the road, the medrese is one of the oldest in the city but stands in ruins, unlike the Fatih İbrahim Paşa Medresesi, a little way west of Cerrahpaşa Hospital, which was erected in 1560 but badly damaged by an earthquake in 1894. It has just been completely restored (rebuilt might be a better word).

Even if you’re starting to feel all mosqued out, it’s still worth heading up Ese Kapısı Sokağı to find the Hekimoğlu Ali Paşa Cami, which was built in 1734-5 in a style that segues neatly from classical Sinanesque into early baroque as exemplified by its main entrance, which blends traditional stalactite decoration with more rococo elements. The mosque itself is particularly beautiful, but you should make sure not to miss either the lovely sebil (water dispensary) built into the walls on the corner, or the wonderful library housed above the main gate. Books here are encased in a cage above the ground and still have to be accessed via a ladder.

Another curious reminder of the Byzantine period can be found nearby, and that is the Cistern of St. Mocius, a vast open-air reservoir that may have been used to store water for irrigation in Byzantine times. At 25,000 square meters, it’s big enough to enclose a park and children’s play area. Just look for a monumental hole in the ground, and you’ve found it.

Finally, if you continue west along Kocamustafapaşa Caddesi you will come to a busy square where many buses terminate. Here, too, is the inconspicuous Ramazan Efendi Cami, the last work of Sinan, designed in 1586 when he was 96. It contains a fine collection of İznik tiles, although you may only be able to get inside to inspect them around prayer time on Friday.

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