One of the most significant monuments in Istanbul's
history has been one of its least fortunate survivors. A large rotunda
from an Late Roman palace was incorporated as the substructure for
the palace of Romanos Lecapenos in the early tenth century. The
church, adjacent to Romanos' palace, was built on separate
substructures, into which a funerary chapel was added in the Late
Byzantine period. The site thus represents three major periods in the
Byzantine history of the city.
The
church, now Bodrum Camii, suffered
in a disasterous restoration in 1964-65 that replaced 90% of the
exterior masonry with concrete bricks, altering the lines of the
building. This restoration was abandoned before completion, and the
building was re-restored in the late 1980s to a more satisfying
appearance, although there is virtually no original surface left on
the building.
The rotunda had been converted to a cistern when
the tenth-century palace was added, with the insertion of dozens of
columns to support the vaulting. In the early 1990s bulldozing for
the construction of a hotel next door damaged the cistern. In
1993-94, the cistern was cleared, cleaned, and replastered by
developers, who have turned it into a shopping bazaar -- one of the
most surprising adaptive reuse projects I've seen. The terrace above
was paved with marble. A photo by Tunay shows the extrados of the
cistern vaults during this work.