Bodrum Mosque, formerly known as the Myrelaion Church, is a religious structure from the Eastern Roman period located in the Laleli neighborhood of the Fatih district in Istanbul. The structure is rather incongruously choked on three sides by modern apartment blocks and stands one kilometer west of the ruins of the Great Palace of Constantinople.
The origin of the church dates back to some years before 922, when the droungarios Romanos Lekapenos bought a house in the ninth region of Constantinople near the Sea of Marmara. After his accession to the throne, this building became the nucleus of a new imperial palace intended to challenge the neighbouring Great Palace, serving also as the family shrine of the Lekapenos family.
To bring the church to the level of the palace, the structure was built on top of a giant fifth-century rotunda. With an external diameter of 41.8 meters, this rotunda was the second largest in the ancient world after the Roman Pantheon. In the tenth century, it was converted into a cistern by covering its interior with a vaulted system carried by at least 70 columns.
The church building is constructed entirely of bricks on a foundation structure made of alternated courses of bricks and stone, following a cross-in-square plan with a nine-meter-long side. The central nave is surmounted by an umbrella dome with a drum interrupted by arched windows, while the side naves are covered by barrel vaults.
The exterior of the building is characterized by half-cylindrical buttresses that articulate its facades, alongside three polygonal apses in the east. During the Ottoman period, a stone minaret was built close to the narthex, and the original marble revetment and mosaics disappeared entirely.
The substructure, in contrast to the upper building, features an austere and rough aspect. Initially meant to elevate the church to the palace level, it was used as a burial chapel after the Palaiologan restoration. Today, the cistern is used by women to pray.
The first person buried in the shrine was the Emperor's wife, Theodora, in December 922, followed by his eldest son Christopher and later Romanos Lekapenos himself after his death in exile. By burying his family here, Romanos interrupted a six-century-old tradition where Byzantine emperors were buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles.
The shrine was ravaged by fire in 1203 during the Fourth Crusade and was abandoned during the Latin occupation. The building was subsequently repaired at the end of the thirteenth century during the Palaiologan restoration period.
Following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, the Myrelaion was converted into a mosque by Grand Vizier Mesih Paşa around 1500 during the reign of Bayezid II. The mosque derived its name from its substructure, as the Turkish word bodrum means subterranean vault or basement.
The edifice suffered further damage from fires in 1784 and 1911, after which it was abandoned. Following excavations in the 1930s and 1960s, and subsequent restoration efforts, the building was finally restored and reopened as a mosque in 1986, with its substructure cistern also restored in 1990.
Wikimedia research dossier · Last checked: 2026-09-12 04:16:24
