[1]
There’s a treat in the basement of Sarnıç Nargile Café in Gedikpaşa Caddesi near Kapalıçarşı. One sits at an authentically bekilimed table and asks for a coffee or a water pipe full of fruity tobacco. Towards the end of one’s imbibificatory preference, one asks whether one can see the basement. In this part of town, once you get below ground, you’re back in Constantinople. There was a plan for an underground Metro running through this area but the Byzantine remains were so unrelentingly continuous and deep that an above-ground tramway was built instead.
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[3]
One is led downstairs past the usual backstage life of a café. Amongst the concrete disorder appears a single Byzantine vault. There are the remains of a surprisingly thin arched brick roof. Beneath that is a section of underground brick with a single layer of stone at the level that the arches begin to curve inward. There was clearly much more of this subterranean structure in earlier times.
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The building bears some resemblance to the vaulting beneath Gül Camii but beyond that, I have no real evidence that this was once part of a church. This site [6] indicates that it was likely to be a cistern below a Byzantine church and appears to reflect the ideas of the redoubtable Ferudun Özgümüş.
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[9]
Numanoğlu, Ö. (2014) Yeraltındaki İstanbul. Tüm Zamanlar. Available online at: https://tumzamanlar.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/yeraltindaki-istanbul/ [6] Accessed 30th Oct 2016
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