CONSTANTINOPLE – The great city on the Bosphoros founded by St. Constantine the Great is one of the world’s most magnificent, both for its man-made and natural beauty – and it is one of the most wonderful places for strolling along its shores, and in between the remains of the great Byzantine land and sea walls.

The sunsets and sunrises rival Santorini’s, the Aghia Sophia was the model for the architectural jewels of other cities – “yes, we need a huge dome in the middle of Rome,” “…Florence,” “…London,” and the food tempts one to abandon the strictest diets.

Every Hellene should go to Constantinople. Do not worry, as some foolishly say, that you will put money in Erdogan’s pocket. Excellent hotels like the Petrion, one block from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, cost 60 euro a night in high season, and other bargains abound in our beloved ‘Poli’. So, it is our ‘Romio’ soul we are investing in. Besides, I invited lots of locals to visit Siphnos… so the money comes back.

Take any airline you please – or even a bus across lost but not forgotten Eastern Thrace – to ‘The City’, check in, and start walking. Anywhere. In any direction. When you feel tired or hungry, find a nice café or restaurant and enjoy that dimension of a great city’s charms.

Pay Attention

As you stroll, pay attention! The great works of architecture of numerous periods prompt pauses to savor, but even the beaten up buildings in areas like the Phanar and Balat near the Patriarchate and the Eminonu business district not far from Aghia Sophia have surprises – pleasant, poignant, and painful.

Look at the Greek key: meander patterns on this building or that… They were probably built by the Poli’s great Greek entrepreneurs. OK, the Corinthian columns, the glory of Roman, not Greek architecture, could have been ordered by anyone who owned those buildings – but the Doric and Ionic elements are probably a hint that Greek was once spoken there.

You learn all kinds of things when you pay attention – not all welcome, but they are valuable experiences nevertheless if they inform and dispel ignorance.  In Constantinople, Greeks will often hear from Turks, “we are your friends… the politicians cause all the trouble.” Well, yes and no – extreme nationalists gain the attention of politicians eager for votes everywhere.

We have an obligation to visit those sacred places.

Constantinople was the heart of Hellenism and the hearth of modern Greek culture for more than 1,000 years. Some Turks wish we would forget that (shamefully, they would have us not remind the world that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has global renown and is arguably the second oldest European institution after the Papacy, but that is another story) but I have experienced warm welcomes there.

The Lost Neighborhood of….

Of course, if you like using the local tour guides and tour buses, go right ahead (I avoid them, even for cities I do not know well, however). Go out and explore – serendipity is one of my favorite words.

At any rate, other than the Phanar, the tour guides will not take you to the old Greek neighborhoods, mainly because the ones who come from the interior were never taught that the as many as 250,000 Greeks who lived there in 1920 – a huge proportion of the city when its total population was around 800,000 – were ethnically cleansed in violation of the Treaty of Lausanne.

So, I walked and walked for miles and miles, on the lookout for shuttered churches and other Hellenic elements. I found one, Aghios Menas, and as I continued walking up the street I turned right, looking down an alley, and had a déjà vu.

The window treatment of a certain nondescript building looked like something I had seen earlier that day… Yes! The windows of the humble but revered Cathedral of St. George at the Patriarchate. I turned into the ‘sokaki’ (yup, a Turkish word) and found a walled complex that included at least two churches… St. Nicholas (mind you, he is very popular and has more than one church in the Poli) and the Aghia Analipsi – The Holy Ascension.

Looking at my map, I attached a name to my discovery: a Greek neighborhood in Constantinople I had never heard of – Samatya, just off the Sea of Marmara, not far from the Yedikule end of the Great Land Walls.
Samatya’s Greek name was Ψαμάθεια or Υψομάθεια, derived from Ψαμάθιον, ‘sandy’, a reference to the shore. The character of the neighborhood has changed several times, partly driven by the many fires that plagued the area and its wooden houses. Before the fires of the 4^th Crusade, Constantinople was dominated by impressive apartment blocks of 4, 6 stories or more.

In 1458, right after the Fall of the City, Mehmet II settled Armenians there, who came to dominate the modest working/middle class district. A major Byzantine monastery was turned over to them, becoming the Armenian Patriarchate. As Armenians prospered and left, more Greeks returned – many resettled from Cappadocia. They were served by five thriving churches before the anti-Greek Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955. Greek Orthodox churches and parishes that supported important schools and other cultural institutions.

The district was featured in the late Phanariot literature of Greek Enlightenment writers like Ioannis Karatzas and Athanasios Psalidas, who together wrote ‘Εροτας Αποτελεσμα – The Consequences of Eros’.

Read that (it’s only in Greek, however) and then visit.