Aya İrini Kilise Müzesi

The Church of Aya İrini is Byzantium’s First Church. While refounding the city, Constantine, one of the Roman emperors, had the Church of Aya İrini built in the 330s on top of Roman temples, alongside a forum, palace and hippodrome in his own name. The dictionary meaning of Aya İrini or Hagia Eirene is `Holy Peace`; but it is also a saint who lived in the same century. The saint’s real name is Penelope. She tries to spread Christianity. She is thrown by pagans into a well full of snakes, but does not die does not die. She is stoned, tied to horses and dragged; still she does not die. At the end of the miracles, the pagans become Christian; and İrini becomes a saint. Emperor Constantine gives the name Aya İrini to the first temple of the monotheistic religion that he had built upon this extraordinary event.

Aya İrini is the only church with an atrium surviving from Byzantium to the present day. The atrium is a courtyard surrounded by porticoes in the middle of ancient Roman temples. Aya İrini has carried the characteristics of the temple whose place it took up to the present day. However, today’s Aya İrini is not the same Aya İrini. Because the first wooden Aya İrini burned in 532. When Emperor Iustinianos absolutely banned the polytheistic belief, the people who revolted, taking refuge in Zeus, burned both Ayasofya and the Church of Aya İrini... Iustinianos had Ayasofya and Aya İrini rebuilt. However, Aya İrini burned once again in 564. It was repaired... After two fires, this time it was shaken by earthquakes. So the church was repaired three times. The Ottoman sultan Mehmet II enters İstanbul and starts a new era. The outer walls of Topkapı Sarayı, whose construction had begun, pass between Ayasofya and Aya İrini. After a while, Aya İrini becomes the inner arsenal where weapons are maintained and repaired.

Aya İrini is the Ottoman’s first museum. When the weapons in the depot became antiques, the first museum was opened in Aya İrini in the 19th century. The double-flight stairs providing access to the galleries of Aya İrini were built at that time. The Ottoman State added to Aya İrini the inscription dated 1726 on the main gate and the staircase. During those old earthquakes that shook Aya İrini, in Byzantium, because icons were religiously forbidden, the walls were left undecorated in the repairs. Today, apart from the cross symbolizing Jesus in the semi-dome of the apse, which the Ottoman closed by hanging a flag over it, and the drawing of a few-stepped platform under the cross symbolizing Golgota Hill where Jesus was crucified, no motif has remained. Since the church was not converted into a mosque after the conquest of İstanbul in 1453, no significant change was made to the structure. It was used for a long time as a depot for booty and weapons. The works forming the first nucleus of the Turkish museum were exhibited here in 1846 by Damat Ahmet Fethi Paşa, one of the Tophane müşirs. In 1869, Aya İrini took the name Müze-i Hümayun (Imperial Museum). In time, because the exhibition spaces here became insufficient, the works here were moved to Çinili Köşk in 1875. From the date 1908 onward, Aya İrini was used as the Military Museum. Later, the structure, which remained empty for a while, was repaired and turned into a unit affiliated with the Directorate of the Ayasofya Museum.

Source: İstanbul Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism

Places to Visit in İstanbul Address: Sultanahmet Square Topkapı Sarayı 1st Courtyard, Sultanahmet Fatih İstanbul