The Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul

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Summary: A Comprehensive Gazetteer of Istanbul's Byzantine Survivals
Review: For co-author John Freely, at least, this book represents a summing-up of everything he's learned in more than 30 years of tramping around Istanbul and studying its Byzantine monuments. Assisted by Ahmet S. Cakmak, a professor of Civil Engineering at Princeton and a specialist on the Haghia Sophia, he has produced a comprehensive gazetteer of Istanbul's remaining Byzantine survivals that should gratify the hearts of both academic specialists and of non-professional Byzantium buffs. The book obviously belongs in academic libraries, but it should also find a place in general circulation libraries that want to ensure thorough coverage for both actual and armchair travelers of a city that is an increasingly popular tourist destination.

Over the past five decades, the remaining Byzantine monuments in Istanbul have begun, one-by-one, to struggle back from years of indifference and neglect. Freely and Cakmak do an inestimable service by providing a comprehensive survey of the skeletal remains of the Byzantine city. Even the most obscure Byzantine sites are catalogued, and not merely that - all of them are also illustrated with at least two photographs or nineteenth-century lithographs and frequently a site plan as well. In all, the book includes 51 color photographs in full-page plates and 162 building plans and black-and-white illustrations - mostly photographs, but also including 19th century lithographs where (as with St. John of Studion) the condition of the structure has declined significantly over the last 100 years.

The chapters are arranged chronologically, and each chapter begins with a historical overview that will be useful for the layperson. Haghia Sophia, not surprisingly, receives comprehensive coverage - almost 40 pages of text, 17 plans and black-and-white illustrations, and 8 in color. (If you review this book before leaving for Istanbul, you will have no excuse for missing anything of substance in Justinian's great church.) Monuments in the second rank like the Church of SS. Sergius & Bacchus or the Kariye Camii are also well-covered, with 7 pages on each.

But the book really shines in its treatment of the most obscure (and often precarious) Byzantine survivals. The Kefili Mescidi, which may (or may not) be the refectory of the monastery of Manuel, rates two photographs and one plan, as does another church known as the Manastir Mescidi. A ruined church called the Sinan Pasa Mescidi also rates two photographs, and Freely and Cakmak cover the Isa Kapi Mescidi, even though they report that it consists of merely "two walls of a Byzantine church and the wreck of a medrese by Sinan." And if you've ever wanted to get the skinny on the Atik Mustafa Pasa Camii (Church of SS. Peter & Mark), or the walls that Nicephorus II Phocas erected around the core of the imperial palace complex, or the Palaces of Antiochus and Lausus near the Hippodrome, then this is the book for you.

There's also coverage of a few well-known and important monuments that no longer survive or do so only in fragments or foundations, like the Baths of Zeuxippos, the Church of Anicia Juliana, the Church of the Holy Apostles, and the Hippodrome itself. And the chapter on pre-Constantinian Byzantium fleshes out what is known about the city of Septimius Severus.

This book is expensive, but there are reasons for that. It is printed on very high-quality paper, in part so that the dazzling color photographs will appear to full advantage. Save your pennies, if you must, but this is definitely a book every lover of Byzantium will want to acquire.