St George's Patriarchal Church in Istanbul

Istanbul reads as a Muslim city at first glance, all minarets and call to prayer, so most visitors are surprised to learn it holds the spiritual centre of world Orthodoxy. St George’s Patriarchal Church in Istanbul, tucked into the old Greek quarter of Fener on the Golden Horn, is the main cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. For more than 400 years it has been the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the figure that close to 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide recognise as their first in honour.

It is a small, modest building from the outside, easy to walk past. Inside is a different story: gilded woodwork, the bones of three of the most important saints in the Eastern Church, and a fragment of stone that, by tradition, Christ was tied to before his crucifixion. Down the road sits the only surviving iron church on the planet. This is my honest guide to the place, its history, what to look for inside, and exactly how to get there.

A short history of the Patriarchate

Christianity reached this city while it was still called Byzantium, and the tradition holds that it arrived remarkably early, in the first century AD. The Holy Apostle Andrew, one of the twelve disciples, is named as the founder of the church here and is counted as the first bishop of Byzantium. Centuries later, in 330, Emperor Constantine the Great moved the capital of the Roman Empire to the city and renamed it Constantinople in his own honour. He filled it with palaces and churches, and the bishops of his new capital rose quickly in status.

The title “Ecumenical” came after the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451, which also placed the see of Constantinople on a level of honour with Rome. That parity did not last. In 1054 the long quarrel between Rome and Constantinople hardened into the Great Schism, splitting the Christian world into the Catholic west and the Orthodox east. From Constantinople, then known to the Slavs as Tsargrad, the faith travelled north into Kievan Rus, with Prince Vladimir’s baptism in 988 marking the moment it took root there.

When Mehmed the Conqueror took Constantinople in 1453, he did something that surprised many: rather than dissolve the Orthodox church, he formally re-established the Patriarchate and gave its head authority over all Orthodox Christians in his empire. Hagia Sophia, the patriarchal cathedral for nearly a thousand years, became a mosque, so the Patriarch was shuffled between several churches over the next century and a half. It was only in 1601 that the residence settled into a former monastery in Fener. It has not moved since. If you want the wider story of how this place changed hands across the centuries, my piece on why Istanbul is not Constantinople fills in the rest.

What is the Fener district, and why is it here?

The name Fener is worth a second. In Byzantine times a lantern hung from a tall column on this stretch of the Golden Horn and worked as a lighthouse for boats coming up the inlet. “Fener” comes from the Greek for lantern, and in Turkish it carries the sense of lighthouse. That single beacon gave the whole neighbourhood its name.

Greeks lived here right through the Ottoman centuries. After the conquest, wealthy aristocratic Greek families clustered around the Patriarchate, and the district became the heart of the Greek community of the empire. Its residents were called Phanariots, and many of them rose high: in the 18th century the Sultan appointed Phanariot nobles as governors of Moldavia and Wallachia, in what is now Romania. The Patriarchate itself was simply known as “the Phanar.”

That world is mostly gone. The Greek minority was persecuted hard in the 20th century, and the Istanbul pogrom of September 1955 burned churches, wrecked homes and schools, and pushed most of the community out. A population that numbered well over 100,000 in the 1920s has dwindled to a couple of thousand today. The streets show it: crumbling timber houses sit right beside lovingly restored mansions, and the area is now overwhelmingly Turkish. Honestly, that faded grandeur is part of what makes a walk here so atmospheric. I cover the whole neighbourhood, cafes and photo spots included, in my guide to Fener and Balat, things to do and see, and there is more on the layered past in the history of Fener and Balat.

What can you see inside St George’s Cathedral?

The short answer: a richly gilded interior and some of the most significant relics in all of Orthodoxy. The cathedral was part of a women’s Orthodox monastery when the Patriarch moved in back in 1601, and over four centuries fire and earthquake forced several rebuilds. The last major restoration ran in the early 1990s, and the iconostasis, the carved wooden screen of icons that dominates the room, was regilded in 1994. It glows.

Three things are worth slowing down for:

• The relics of the Three Hierarchs. On the left side of the church rest the bones of Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and Basil the Great, three of the towering figures of early Christian thought. The remains were carried off to Rome by crusaders who sacked the city in 1204. In 2004, eight centuries later, Pope John Paul II returned the relics of Gregory and John to the Patriarchate, and Basil’s followed soon after. They sit behind their icons in marble cases.
• The column of flagellation. On the far right, beside the iconostasis, stands one of the most treasured objects here: a section of stone column said to be part of the post to which Christ was bound and whipped before the crucifixion. Tradition holds that St Helena, mother of Constantine, brought it from Jerusalem. Two further fragments are kept in Jerusalem itself.
• The patriarchal throne and the icons. A wood-and-inlay throne, said by some to date back to the Byzantine era, and several old icons reward an unhurried look.

The cathedral played its part in living history too. On 5 and 6 January 2019, it was here that the Tomos granting autocephaly, full self-government, to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was signed.

One detail worth knowing before you arrive. The main gate of the compound is welded permanently shut. It stays closed in memory of Patriarch Gregory V, who was hanged from it on Easter Sunday in 1821, accused of siding with Greek revolutionaries. You enter through a side gate instead.

The Iron Church: St Stephen of the Bulgars

Before or after the Patriarchate, walk the short stretch along the water to the most unusual church in the city. St Stephen’s, the Bulgarian church, stands right on the bank of the Golden Horn, roughly 300 metres from the Fener ferry pier. It belongs to the Bulgarian community that took shape here in the 18th and 19th centuries and eventually broke from the Greek Patriarchate as Bulgarian national feeling grew.

Here is what makes it special: the entire structure is made of cast iron and steel. The Austrian firm Waagner prefabricated it in Vienna in the 1890s, then shipped the parts (around 500 tonnes of them) down the Danube, across the Black Sea, and through the Bosphorus to be bolted together on site like an enormous kit. The walls are tin, the body steel, and the carved wooden iconostasis inside was the first Art Nouveau interior the city had seen. Prefabricated iron churches were a Victorian fashion, usually shipped out to far-flung colonies, but almost none survive. St Stephen’s is the last fully preserved iron church in the world, which alone makes the detour worth it. At the time of writing it is free to enter, open daily roughly 09:00 to 17:00, and worth catching before late afternoon.

How to get to the Patriarchate

St George’s sits about 2 km up the Golden Horn from Eminönü. There are two sensible ways to do it, and both cost the same single Istanbulkart fare.

By bus (fastest). From the stops at Eminönü, to the left of the Galata Bridge as you face the far bank, buses heading up the Golden Horn run to the Fener stop in roughly 5 to 10 minutes when traffic behaves. Get off at Fener, cross the road, turn into the lane by the mosque, and it is about a 100 metre walk to the cathedral. If you would rather plan the wider route, my Istanbul transportation guide and the ferry timetables and fares cover passes and schedules.

By ferry (my pick). Slower, prettier, and far more memorable. The Golden Horn (Haliç) line run by Şehir Hatları stops at Fener, and at the time of writing boats run roughly hourly from around 07:30 into the evening, with a later start on Sundays. You watch the inlet slide past, pass the Iron Church on the approach, hop off at the Fener jetty, then walk through the little park, cross the road, and take the same lane by the mosque to the cathedral. If you love this side of the city, pair it with a Bosphorus walk at sunset on another day.

Opening hours, entry and dress code

St George’s Church is open daily, generally from 8:00 to around 16:30. It can close to visitors for part of the morning on Sundays when the Patriarch is in residence for the liturgy, usually once a month, so a weekday late morning is the easy, reliable choice. Avoid Sunday unless you specifically want to sit through a service.

Entry is free, but expect strict security at the gate, with bag checks. Dress modestly: shoulders and knees covered for everyone, and women are asked to cover their heads inside. Bring a scarf if your top is sleeveless, the same etiquette you would use for any of the historic churches worth visiting in Istanbul or, for that matter, the city’s grand mosques.

A practical tip to close on. Fener and Balat are made for slow wandering, so do not treat the Patriarchate as a quick tick-box stop. Give yourself half a day, throw in the Iron Church and a coffee on one of the painted backstreets, and you will get far more out of it than a rushed in-and-out.

Official site: patriarchate.org.