Bodrum Mosque

Bodrum Mosque is the church of the Myrelaion, built around 920 by Romanos I Lekapenos as the chapel of his own palace, and it is one of the very few tenth-century churches of Constantinople still standing. Romanos meant it from the start as a burial place for his family, which was a deliberate break with the imperial tradition of interment at the Church of the Holy Apostles: his wife Theodora was buried here in December 922, his son Christopher in 931, and Romanos himself after his death in 948. A ramp assists entry to the prayer floor, but the crypt is not public and exterior thresholds and steps limit the full monument. It was the Byzantine Myrelaion church. Open daily around the five prayer services; tourist entry pauses during worship and Friday noon. Entry is free; donations are voluntary. T1 Laleli-Üniversite is a short walk; Vezneciler M2 is north through the university quarter.

The plan is a cross-in-square — a quincunx — with a square core about nine metres a side and an overall footprint of roughly ten by seventeen metres including a three-bay narthex and a tripartite sanctuary. It is built entirely of brick, which is unusual enough to be one of the reasons the building matters to historians of Byzantine construction. The dome and its drum carry a fluted surface, the form known as a pumpkin dome, and the exterior walls are articulated by semi-cylindrical buttresses that give the little building its ribbed, muscular silhouette. T1 Laleli-Üniversite is a short walk; Vezneciler M2 is north through the university quarter.

Twenty minutes, and that is generous. This guide records twenty and the building supports it: a single compact prayer hall of one domed bay with almost nothing of its original decoration left, plus a circuit of the exterior to read the brick buttresses and the platform the church sits on. The real limit is not how much there is to see but whether the door is open.

Open daily around the five prayer services; tourist entry pauses during worship and Friday noon. T1 Laleli-Üniversite is a short walk; Vezneciler M2 is north through the university quarter. A ramp assists entry to the prayer floor, but the crypt is not public and exterior thresholds and steps limit the full monument.

Entry is free; donations are voluntary. Open daily around the five prayer services; tourist entry pauses during worship and Friday noon. A ramp assists entry to the prayer floor, but the crypt is not public and exterior thresholds and steps limit the full monument. T1 Laleli-Üniversite is a short walk; Vezneciler M2 is north through the university quarter.

T1 Laleli-Üniversite is a short walk; Vezneciler M2 is north through the university quarter. A ramp assists entry to the prayer floor, but the crypt is not public and exterior thresholds and steps limit the full monument. Open daily around the five prayer services; tourist entry pauses during worship and Friday noon.

A ramp assists entry to the prayer floor, but the crypt is not public and exterior thresholds and steps limit the full monument. Historic surfaces, crowds and security remain relevant. Open daily around the five prayer services; tourist entry pauses during worship and Friday noon.

Photograph the outside. That is not a consolation prize — the exterior is what survives of the Myrelaion's architecture, and the interior has been stripped of its marble and mosaic, so the brick is the subject either way. The best angle is from the north-west, looking up at the building on its platform: from there the semi-cylindrical buttresses read as a series of vertical ribs against the wall, the fluted drum sits clearly above them, and the height of the substructure is legible instead of being cropped out. Entry is free; donations are voluntary.