Myrelaion Monastery
| Bodrum Mosque Bodrum Camii |
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|---|---|
The mosque viewed from northwest as of 2007[update]
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| Basic information | |
| Location | Istanbul, Turkey |
| Geographic coordinates | 41°0′31″N 28°57′20″E / 41.00861°N 28.95556°E |
| Affiliation | Sunni Islam |
| Architectural description | |
| Architectural type | church with cross-in-square plan |
| Architectural style | Byzantine |
| Completed | 10th century |
| Specifications | |
| Minaret(s) | 1 |
| Materials | Brick |
Bodrum Mosque (Turkish: Bodrum Camii, or Mesih Paşa Camii named after its converter) in Istanbul, Turkey, is a former Eastern Orthodox church converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. The church was known under the Greek name of Myrelaion (Greek: Eκκλησία του Μυρελαίου).
The medieval structure, rather incongruously choked on three sides by modern blocks, stands in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih, in the neighbourhood of Laleli, one kilometre west of the ruins of the Great Palace of Constantinople.
Some years before 922, possibly during the wars against Simeon I's Bulgaria, the drungarius Romanos Lekapenos bought a house in the ninth region of Constantinople, not far from the Sea of Marmara, in the place called Myrelaion ("the place of myrrh" in Greek). After his accession to the throne this building became the nucleus of a new imperial palace, intended to challenge the neighbouring Great Palace of Constantinople, and the family shrine of the Lekapenos family.
The palace of Myrelaion was built on top of a giant fifth century rotunda which, with an external diameter of 41.8 metres (137 ft), was the second largest, after the Roman Pantheon, in the ancient world. In the tenth century the rotunda was not used anymore, and then it was converted - possibly by Romanos himself - into a cistern by covering its interior with a vaulted system carried by at least 70 columns. Near the palace the Emperor built a church, which he intended from the beginning to use as burial place for his family.
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