Ecumenical Patriarchate & St George's: The Gate Shut Since 1821
Why is it significant?
Stand in front of the high wall and find the main gate in the middle, firmly shut. Visitors and priests come and go through a smaller door to the side. Nobody uses the middle one. Nobody has used it for two hundred years.
Key Facts
| Place | Ecumenical Patriarchate & St George's: The Gate Shut Since 1821 |
|---|---|
| Address | Dr. Sadrazam Ali Paşa Caddesi No:35, Fener, 34083 Fatih/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.02940, 28.95140 |
| Part of Walk | Neighbours of the Golden Horn: Fener, Balat and Istanbul's Greek, Jewish, Armenian and Bulgarian Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in front of the high wall and find the main gate in the middle, firmly shut. Visitors and priests come and go through a smaller door to the side. Nobody uses the middle one. Nobody has used it for two hundred years.
On Easter Sunday 1821, just after the liturgy, Ottoman officials hanged Patriarch Gregory the Fifth from that gate, still in his vestments. The Greek War of Independence had just broken out, and the sultan held the head of all his Orthodox subjects responsible for the revolt. The body hung there for three days and was then thrown into the water. Greek sailors recovered it and carried it to Odessa, and in 1871 it was taken to Athens, where he is venerated as a saint and martyr. The gate was closed behind him and has stayed closed ever since, a door turned into a memorial.
The patriarchs have not always lived here. For more than a thousand years they served in Hagia Sophia, then after 1453 in other churches of the city, including the Pammakaristos you will see later on this walk. Only around 1601 did they settle in this corner of Fener, whose name comes from the Greek Phanari, a lantern or lighthouse. The Church of St George in the courtyard was rebuilt in the 1700s and looks like a parish church from outside. Inside there is a blaze of gilded, carved wood, and a fragment of a column that tradition says is the pillar at which Christ was scourged.
In 2004 Pope John Paul the Second returned relics of two great archbishops of Constantinople, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom, taken to Rome by crusaders after the sack of 1204. They rest in this church again, eight centuries after they left. The man who received them, Patriarch Bartholomew, has held the office since 1991, first among equals in the Orthodox world.
And yet the Greek community outside these walls has shrunk to a few thousand people in the whole city. By Turkish law the patriarch must be a Turkish citizen, so the pool of possible successors is very small. How does an institution survive like that? Stubbornly. Now go down to the waterfront road and turn left along the Golden Horn, until you see a church that looks as if it were made of dark lace.