Ruin Porn: Greek Orphanage, Büyükada

Büyükada is one of the Prince's Islands, in the sea of Marmara just outside of Istanbul. The Büyükada Greek Orphanage (Büyükada Rum Yetimhanesi) is one of the world's largest wooden buildings, now a stunning semi-ruin. Built in the 1898-1899 by French-Turkish architect Alexandre Vallaury, it's the largest and one of the finest examples of Ottoman Beaux-Arts architecture. Vallaury, the head of the architecture department of the School of Fine Arts ("Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi", now Mimar Sinan University), also designed the Istanbul Archaeology Museum and was a friend of Osman Hamdi Bey.

They're serious with the dogs and guards, otherwise I would have been in here in a hot second. The orphanage was used as a government building in the 1940s, and was abandoned in the 1960s. After a lengthy court battle, title to the building was returned to the Greek Orthodox patriarchate last year.

I've had trouble finding interior photos, but this one from the Turkish Forest and Environment Ministry's website gives a taste of the incredible interior decor. There's vague rumors of restoration plans, but I have trouble even imagining the expense involved.

Research notes: Istanbul

I'm in Turkey this month, doing research with some colleagues from Bologna on how cultural heritage here is organized, administered, and funded. I'll be blogging a little less than usual, but I'll share some reflections on our research as I'm able.

The vast excavation area at Yenikapı

One of our case studies is the excavations at Yenikapı, the hub station for the Marmaray metro that will connect the European and Asian sides of Istanbul under the Bosphorus. The Japanese-Turkish consortium building the subway thought that they had picked a clever spot outside of the archaeological zone of the ancient city - but as they excavated they found a Byzantine port with 32 well-preserved shipwrecks dating from the 5th-11th centuries! Many of them sunk with their cargos abord. This video from NatGeo is a good introduction (they don't allow embeds).

Look at these cool-ass shipwrecks!

Salvage excavations at the site are winding up after 5 years, and we're looking forward to learning more about the history of the project, which has been the largest urban archaeology project in Turkey's history. Funded by the construction subcontractors of the subway project, the archaeological work was supervised by the Istanbul Archaeology Museum with cooperation from Istanbul University, Texas A&M, and many other institutions.

Oh, and they found some 8,500 year old burials, extending the earliest known settlement of the city by a couple thousand years!

Salvage archaeology in an urban setting is pretty different from the Indiana Jones stereotype. It's more of an industrial operation, with huge tensions between construction companies (who live and die by deadlines) and archaeologists (who would much rather take their time and not think about money). What we're going to be doing is reconstructing the administration of the project: its organization, funding, history, controversies, and aftermath (what are they going to do with all those boats?!). It should be fun. I'll keep you posted.

 

An Art Historical Tour of Istanbul’s Quakes

Today's New York Times profiles some of the great historical earthquake images (1200s-1900s) in UC Berkeley's Kozak Collection with a slide show from Istanbul and environs (see the full Times gallery here.)


Anonymous woodcut depicting the Sea of Marmara earthquake of 1509, the "lesser judgment day". It registered about 7.2 and killed about 10,000 people. There's something appropriate about the scale: the people are reproduced at the same size as the buildings, as if to convey that life is just as important as property.
(Reproduced in N.N. Ambraseys and C.F. Finkel, 'The Marmara Sea Earthquake of 1509'. Terra Nova, 2:2, 1990, pp. 167-174.)

An 1894 xylograph from the Kozak Collection, showing damage to the city walls of Istanbul. Parts of the walls still look much like this today - except where they have been "Disneyfied" by the heavy-handed reconstructions that earned the walls a place on the World Monuments Fund's 2008 Watch List.

Check out the rest!

H/T to Diana Wright, via H-TURK.

Constantinople 1453

I’ve been digging this great preview that reimagines the conquest of Istanbul/Constantinople with Mehmet the Conqueror and the Turkish army as the heroes. Funding to actually make the whole movie doesn’t exist yet, from what I understand, but it’s a nice proof of concept and looks awesome to boot. It's interesting to see the Ottomans as protagonists - it goes against a lot of cultural programming that Europeans and Americans get of the Turk as the sinister enemy of civilization. Personally, I think of the Ottomans as the last dynasty of the Roman Empire.*



Not to be missed is the hysterically funny nationalist flame war in the comments section, mostly revolving around off-color gay jokes and racial slurs. Check out these literary gems:

"greeks invented sex but turks introduced it to woman"

"Muslim monkeys , go home to Asia. Constantinopolis will be GREEK again, no matter you-gay turks  want this or not!"

"Just coz u got Europe on ur back does that mean u can act like a super force? Ur army contains of greek cobans, centaurs, elfs, trolls and probably other greek gay mythical creatures."

Nice that history is so relevant in the present day, right? Right?

*Fun fact: Mehmet II (the Conqueror) took the title Kaysar-i-Rum (Caesar of Rome) after the conquest, and the Ottoman Sultans used it as a title right up until 1923.

Scuba Diving Beneath Hagia Sophia

BLDGBLOG reports on an upcoming film that nearly makes me wet my pants with excitement:

While scuba diving beneath Hagia Sophia, an exploratory team led by filmmaker Goksel Gülensoy has "managed to reach areas that until now, no one had ever managed to reach," down there in flooded basins 1000 feet beneath Istanbul's heavily touristed religious structure.
In the process, they have discovered 800-year old submerged graves containing the remains of "canonized children."
This was just part of a larger, underwater archaeo-spatial survey:

The divers and specialists explored the connection of the basins underneath Aghia Sophia with the aqueduct and the palace of Top Kapi. In addition they attempted to locate the secret tunnels from Tekfour Palace to the Islands.

Those "secret tunnels" are presumably the rumored subterranean extensions of the Anemas Dungeons – but who knows.

Secret tunnels from Tekfur Sarayı to the Islands? Subterranean dungeons? Sign me up!