Bodrum Mosque

The Myrelaion mosque, in Turkish Bodrum Camii, is a converted Byzantine church in the Laleli neighbourhood of Fatih. Built around 920 by the future emperor Romanos I Lekapenos as his palace church, it is one of the few surviving examples of Macedonian-dynasty church architecture in Istanbul. Characteristic is the cross-in-square plan rising above an older 5th-century rotunda cistern still accessible in the substructure. The Greek name refers to a relic of myrrh once kept here. After the Ottoman conquest the building was converted into a mosque in the late 15th century and burned out in 1784 and 1911, but the austere brick shell survived. Today visitors enter a plain prayer room of bare masonry and can see the Roman rotunda directly beneath.