Bulgarian St Stephen's Church: The Iron Church
Why is it significant?
Step into the little park by the water and take in the church in front of you: pale walls, slender columns, a bell tower and a crown of domes topped with crosses. It looks like stone.
Key Facts
| Place | Bulgarian St Stephen's Church: The Iron Church |
|---|---|
| Address | Mürselpaşa Caddesi No:85, Balat, 34087 Fatih/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.03180, 28.94970 |
| Part of Walk | Neighbours of the Golden Horn: Fener, Balat and Istanbul's Greek, Jewish, Armenian and Bulgarian Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
Step into the little park by the water and take in the church in front of you: pale walls, slender columns, a bell tower and a crown of domes topped with crosses. It looks like stone. If you get close enough to tap a column with your knuckle, though, you hear a hollow, metallic answer... because almost everything you see is cast iron.
Why iron? The story begins with a quarrel. In the nineteenth century, the Bulgarians of the Ottoman Empire wanted services and schools in their own language, not in Greek under the Patriarchate up the road. In 1870 the sultan granted them their own church, the Bulgarian Exarchate, and two years later the Patriarchate declared it schismatic. The Bulgarians of Istanbul already worshipped in a wooden church on this plot by the shore, and they wanted something grander. The usual explanation for the iron is the ground itself: soft land by the Golden Horn, poorly suited to heavy masonry.
So they ordered a prefabricated church. It was designed by the Armenian architect Hovsep Aznavur, and its parts were cast in Vienna by the Waagner company, numbered, shipped down the Danube and across the Black Sea, and bolted together on this spot. It was consecrated in 1898. Even the ornaments, capitals and columns are metal, painted to look like stone and marble. Very few iron churches exist anywhere in the world, and this is the one people cross the city to see.
Iron and salty air are not good friends. By the 2000s the church was badly corroded and had to close for years of restoration, carried out jointly by Turkey and Bulgaria. It reopened in January 2018, with the leaders of both countries at the ceremony. Look for the fresh paint and the careful repairs on the old metal.
Notice the irony. A church built to stand apart from the Greek patriarch, a short stroll from his door, and today both communities are small islands of memory in the same neighbourhood. Now cross the road and climb inland, up the steep lanes. Above the rooftops you will see a red-brick fortress with a dome... head for it.