Where is constantine tomb

In a severe earthquake toppled the statue. The church, once again restored to a large extent by Andonicus II Palaeologus , was thenceforth abandoned to the ravages of time and neglect as the Byzantine Empire declined and Constantinople's population fell. The Florentine Cristoforo Buondelmonti saw the dilapidated church in But because the church was in a dilapidated state and stood in a district where few Christians lived, the Patriarcate was soon transferred to the Theotokos Pammacaristos Church where it remained until before moving to St George Church.

Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople Istanbul. The mausolea of Constantine the Great the main imperial burial place until the eleventh century and of Justinian I were in the complex surrounding this vast cruciform church. Nothing of this complex appeared to have survived its demolition to clear the site of the Ottoman mosque complex of Fatih Camii after Fieldwork in recorded walls pre—dating the fifteenth—century phase of the mosque complex, still standing above ground level and apparently including a large rectilinear structure.

This is identified as the Church of the Holy Apostles and an adjacent enclosure may be that containing the mausoleum of Constantine the Great. Thanks for the above, but to be clear I was referring to the original Constantine who founded Constantinople and the early Byzantine emperors , not the last emperor who died in battle against the Turks - the essay you reference deals with the latter Constantine.

And the link you provided doesn't really explain what happened to the tombs of Constantine and his fellow emperors - were they utterly destroyed, or do they remain buried beneath the mosque and preserved to some extent?

Or is that altogether unknown? Kirialax Ad Honorem. Dec 5, Blachernai. However, the church appears to have been in quite bad shape by the time of the Turkish conquest and it is questionable whether maintenance and repair would have been possible at the time, thus leaving the place a bit of a hazard for public health. It also occupied the highest hill inside the land walls, and thus was a desirable location for Mehmed to put his mosque.

To acquire the church, there's a story of the corpse of a Turk being found in the courtyard, which led to hostile demonstrations by the Turks. The patriarch requested to move elsewhere, and the patriarchate thus passed to the Pammakaristos church, part of which is today a museum with spectacular golden mosaic.

I suspect that Mehmed had two reasons behind its destruction. First, repairs would have been quite costly. Second, by putting his own mosque on the highest hill, he demonstrated very clearly to his subjects that he could do as he pleased while reminding them that they now lived in a Muslim empire.

This latter point is important because Mehmed immediately set about re-populating Constantinople after the conquest, but not with Turks. He filled the city with Armenians. Constantine subsequently ordered a majestic church —now known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—to be built at the site. Over the centuries, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been razed during regional conflicts, consumed by a fire and rattled by an earthquake—only to be resurrected after each catastrophe.

Previously, the earliest archaeological evidence found at the site of the tomb dated to the Crusader period, about 1, years ago. It had a bronze-tiled roof like the Pantheon in Rome. The interior was screened with gilt-bronze grills. Inside the walls were encrusted with colored marbles and the dome was coffered and gilded. Above you can see how the cavities in the tombs carved out for the bodies were shallow. There seems to be hardly any room in there.

Once the tombs reached Constantinople it took huge numbers of oxen to move them from the harbor up two hills to their destination at Constantine's new mausoleum. It was a public spectacle that crowds of people watched. Constantine also moved seven huge, ten foot tall circular porphyry blocks for his column in the forum he named for himself. Each block was about the size of a tomb.

On the left you can see the lid of the tomb of Julian being discovered in beneath a tree in a court of the Old Seraglio. Two lids were found at the same time by the Administration of the Ottoman now Archeological Museum.

Lists of items in the quarries or in port were sent to Constantinople by local officials so that government builders and engineers knew what was available for new building projects and what was in production. Much of the porphyry ended up stock-piled in marble yards in Constantinople. By the reign of Justinian these supplies were exhausted by the building of Hagia Sophia.

Plague and warfare reduced the workforce and shut down the pipeline of new marbles. The Orthodox Church does not allow people to be buried in churches - meaning the main nave where the liturgy is performed.

This rule was always being pushed to the limit in Byzantium. If they couldn't be buried in the nave rich people and emperors built chapels or buried people in ambulatories that wrapped around the sanctuaries. They believed their souls would benefit from the continuous celebration of the liturgy and the prayers of the monastics and visitors.

That's a major reason rich people built monasteries, so they could bury themselves and their families within them. Placing one's tomb close to the relics of important saints - like the Church of the Holy Apostles - meant increased traffic and more prayers. The people of Constantinople would frequently visit the Heroons of the Holy Apostles. They knew all of the stories associated with this or that emperor or empress and would teach their kids about their history and heritage this way. The Heroons of the Holy Apostles were set in beautiful gardens with grassy meadows, flowery trees and plants, there were fountains which made them even more popular destinations for family outings.

Above is another view of the excavation of the tombs in The ancient plane tree was saved. In Constantinople the emperors went to great lengths to protect their earthly remains and immortalize themselves and their families in public settings. There were 94 Byzantine Emperors who reigned over a period of years. Despite the enormous efforts they took only one Byzantine emperor was found in his own tomb , Andronikos II Palaeologus, who reigned from to He was was interred beneath the floor of a small ruined church.

He had been missed because his grave made a solid level of mortar topped by a marble opus sectile floor and was right in front of the main entrance to the church. Anyone entering the sanctuary or the mosque in its later days walked right over him.

He was buried in a simple wood coffin set inside a marble-lined cavity that was topped by a marble plaque that had no inscription. The simplicity of his grave reflects the fact that before his death in he had become a monk living in poverty named Anthony.

Why were all but one of the graves of the Byzantine emperors destroyed? Over a period of several hundred years they either destroyed or converted into mosques virtually all of the churches in the city. Along with all of the Christian furnishings that were used in worship services and their decoration, the Ottomans cleared out all of the tombs and burials they could find. The only reason Andronikos II was safe in his tomb to be found by archaeologists in the 's was because he had been overlooked beneath the floor of the narthex of a church that burned and his grave was concealed underneath a layer of debris.

Several of his family members were found with him. Imagine what would have happened to Italy or France if they experienced Byzantium's fate and had been conquered by Islam. There would be almost nothing left of western Christian culture in Paris, Rome or Florence; all of their churches would be mosques, all of the castles, statues and palaces would be gone. This is something to reflect upon as one looks at the sad broken and empty tombs of the Eastern Roman Emperors who once ruled a good part of the western world for a very long time.

Prayers continued to be said over their tombs for over a thousand years and their bodies were lain facing east in anticipation of it. There were two mausoleums - Heroons - at the Church of the Holy Apostles.

Building Heroons is a very old practice which dates from ancient Greece and Rome. The southern one was dominated by the enormous tomb of Constantine I which was built by his son Constantius II.

Next it received in succession the tombs of Pulcheria and Marcian, Leo I and Verina, Zeno A voice was heard from his tomb for three days afterwards crying "Have pity on me" , and Anastasius I killed by a lightning bolt during a violent thunderstorm that hit him or the palace, he might have died of fright and his wife Adriane.

Finally it became the dynastic mausoleum of the Macedonian dynasty beginning with Basil I and ending in There were 20 tombs in all, some containing multiple bodies. Not all of them were made of porphyry. All of the Red Porphyry tombs were in the mausoleum of Constantine.

The tomb above is most likely that of Julian, it's the largest. All of the pictures on this page were taken in the rain - hence the spots. One can see the places - especially in the corners - where the tombs were damaged when they were pried open by vandals searching for treasures. One scholar, Delbrueck, believes this porphyry tomb came from Alexandra and had originally been used for the burial of one of the the Ptolemaic Kings or Queens of Egypt. This one has no crosses on it and is the largest.

The second, northern mausoleum was built by Justinian I in cruciform shape, which was in turn dominated by his tomb in the apse. He built the second mausoleum at the same time as he rebuilt the Church of the Holy Apostles as a cruciform domed church.

Justinian lived a very long time - into his 80s - so he had long time to contemplate his tomb before he was put in it. His mausoleum housed most of the emperors and many of their empresses until Michael II in when it was full to capacity. Almost all of these tombs were carved from big blocks of either green Verde Antico or white Proconnesian marble.

Red Porphyry was no longer being quarried. There was one tomb in a beautiful crystalline white Docimian onyx marble made for Heraclius Christensen Award recipient, shared his findings on the lost tomb of Constantine I.

Built in the fourth century AD, the building served as both a church and his own mausoleum. As recipient of the P.