Pammakaristos or Fethiye Museum

Yesterday's adventure was to find the Fethiye Museum, originally one of two churches named Pammakaristos. The location required me to take a ferry down the Golden Horn to the Fener stop. The Golden Horn is one of the bays off of the Bosphorus and it is very long and skinny. This was my first time on such a fancy ferry... The inside was luxurious with monitors for live TV.

Upon arriving in Fener, the roads were cobbled and in good shape.

Old Istanbul is built on 7 hills. I climbed about 13 of them to get to the Fethiye Museum. The day was overcast and cool with fairly strong winds, so that helped quite a bit.

The original Pammakaristos church is now a mosque. But back in the 14th century, the wife of the patron who had the church built, had a second smaller funerary chapel built adjacent to the original structure. This smaller structure is now a museum and houses some of the better Byzantine mosaics in Istanbul.

The brickwork inside is as pretty as the brickwork outside.

Here is the central dome with a beautiful mosaic of Jesus and 12 old testament prophets.
Yes, I can hear Bill saying that he wished I had a better camera... I will go back and try to take better pictures.

Inside, there is also a fresco of the three wise men.

I had the place to myself, except for the two attendants who took my $3 admission outside and one attendant inside who tracked me. I think I drove him crazy, as I kept going back and forth between the sign noting the mosaics, frescoes, markings, etc. and the actual item. He got his workout following me around.

There were no candles lit in the church, but as you can see, they are prepared in the event of a fire, albeit a very small contained one.

After my visit, I walked down the hill and walked along the Golden Horn to the Kadir Has University. They have a small museum down one level from the street entrance to the building. They have excavated some of the old brick walls below this part of the city and house their archaeological collections around the walls. It was a very impressive display, of which they allow no photos..., so we end on the fire remediation system.