Mocius cistern

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Map of the Byzantine Constantinople

The Mocius cistern ( Greek κινστέρνη τοῦ Μωκίου ; Turkish Altımermer Çukurbostanı , sunken garden of Altımermer ) was the largest open cistern in Byzantine Constantinople.

location

The cistern is located in the Seyyid Ömer district of Istanbul's Fatih district between Ziya Gökalp Sokak in the north and Cevdet Paşa Caddesi in the south. In the southwest is the Seyyid-Ömer-Mosque. The cistern was inside the Theodosian Wall on the seventh hill of what was once Constantinople in Region XII. overlooking the Marmara Sea .

history

After the Patria Konstantinupoleos the cistern was built under the Byzantine emperor Anastasios I (reign 491-518). The cistern takes its name from the church of St. Mocius, which was once located on the southwest corner . The cistern was located within the Theodosian Land Wall and was supposed to ensure the water supply for newly built districts.

The explorer Pierre Gilles wrote around 1540 that the cistern had already dried out by that time. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 , the cistern was called Çukurbostan ( Sunken Garden ) because vegetables were planted here until the end of the 20th century. The area has been a park since 2014 ( Turkish : Fındıkzade Eğitim parkı ).

description

The rectangular cistern is 170 meters long, 147 meters wide and covers an area of ​​25,000 m². This made it the largest cistern in Constantinople. The average depth is unknown, as earth was filled inside, but it is estimated that the walls were originally between 10.50 meters and 15 meters high, of which two to four meters are still visible today. The reservoir could thus store between 260,000 and 370,000 m³ of water. The six meter thick walls were built using the Roman wall technique opus listatum from alternating strips of red brick and cast masonry. The cast masonry was faced with ashlar, so that a band is created on the outside, which is typical for the cisterns of this time and was also used in the Aetius cistern and the Aspar cistern .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Pictorial dictionary on the topography of Istanbul: Byzantion, Konstantinupolis, Istanbul up to the beginning of the 17th century . Wasmuth, Tübingen 1977, ISBN 978-3-8030-1022-3 , p. 279
  2. ^ A b c d e Raymond Janin : Constantinople Byzantine . Institut Français d'Etudes Byzantines, Paris 1964, p. 205
  3. ^ A b Ernest Mamboury : The Tourists' Istanbul . Çituri Biraderler Basımevi, Istanbul 1953, p. 326
  4. ^ Raymond Janin: Constantinople Byzantine . Institut Français d'Etudes Byzantines, Paris 1964, p. 33
  5. ↑ a b Feride Imrana Altun: Istanbul'un 100 Roma, Bizans Eseri . Istanbul Buyukşehir Belediyesi Kültür A.Ş. Yayınları, Istanbul 2009, ISBN 978-9944-370-76-9 , p. 142
  6. ↑ Fındıkzade Çukurbostan Şehir Parkı Yeni Haliyle Hizmetinizde , Fatih Belediyesi, accessed on May 10, 2019
  7. ^ Semavi Eyice : Istanbul. Petite Guide à travers les Monuments Byzantins et Turcs . Istanbul Matbaası, Istanbul 1955, p. 86

Coordinates: 41 ° 0 ′ 37 ″  N , 28 ° 56 ′ 5 ″  E