Bogdan Saray

Ottoman Porte.^[1][2] The building – whose parts above ground have almost completely disappeared – is a minor example of Byzantine architecture in Constantinople

museum of Chora and 100 m north of the Kefeli Mosque, both former Byzantine religious buildings.^[1] The ruins of the edifice are hardly accessible, as of 2012, as they are enclosed in a tire shop at Draman Caddesi 32.^[3]

Komnenian age,^[1][5] while for others it is a Palaiologan foundation of the fourteenth century.^[2] Its north–south orientation shows that it was originally erected not as a church, but rather as a funerary chapel.^[1][2]

state of war between the Russian Empire and the Sublime Porte.^[4] In the nineteenth century the edifice steadily decayed and after the 1894 Istanbul earthquake fell into ruin. In 1918 a German archaeologist pursued clandestine excavations and found in the crypt three unnamed tombs.^[4] In the second half of the 20th century the remains of the building were enclosed in a shanty (Turkish: Gecekondu), and today—lying inside a tire shop—they are hardly accessible.^[7] As of 2012 the parts above ground have almost disappeared, and only the crypt still exists.^[4]

transverse arches across the walls, and ended towards North with a Bema and a polygonal apse adorned externally with niches, while the crypt was surmounted by a barrel vault and had also a simple apse.^[2] The edifice's brickwork consisted of courses of three or four rows of white stones alternating with a row of red bricks, obtaining a chromatic effect typical of the late Byzantine period. Its north–south orientation suggests the building's use as a funerary chapel, rather than as a church, since churches in Constantinople were almost always oriented in east–west direction.^[2] The attested past existence of remains of walls perpendicular to the structure indicates the possibility that this was part of a larger complex, most likely the monastery of St. John of Petra, one of the largest monasteries of Constantinople.^[2]