Travel Reference
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by the many marble columns of the portico, and not least by the
fine old trees - cypresses, locusts and two enormous terebinths -
that grow out of the open türbes and in the courtyard. The külliye
now serves as the Museum of Turkish Architectural Works and
Construction Elements, including architectural and sculptural
fragments, calligraphical inscriptions and old tombstones. One
particularly interesting exhibit is the top of one of the minarets of
Fatih Camii, toppled by the earthquake in 1894.
DÜLGERZADE CAMİİ
Opposite the Amcazade complex in a pretty little park is an ugly
broken-of column, typical of First World War memorials everywhere;
it commemorates Turkish aviators killed during the war and is dated
1922. On the north side of the park is the old Fatih Town Hall,
built in 1913 in a style known as Ottoman Revivalism. Continuing
westward along the main avenue on the same side as the Amcazade
complex we pass an ancient but not very interesting little mosque
called Dülgerzade Camii; it was built by one of Fatih's officials,
Şemsettin Habib Efendi, sometime before his death in 1482.
COLUMN OF MARCİAN
Beyond the mosque we turn left and a short distance down the street
we see the second of the four late Roman honorific columns in the
city, the Column of Marcian. This column, though known to Evliya,
escaped even the penetrating eyes of Gyllius and remained unknown
to the West until rediscovered in 1675 by Spon and Wheeler. It
continued to be hidden away in a garden behind the houses around
it until 1908, when a fire destroyed all the buildings and exposed it
to view, and since then it has formed the centre of a little square. It
is a monolithic column of Syenitic granite resting on a high marble
pedestal; the column is surmounted by a battered Corinthian capital
and a plinth with eagles at the corners on which there once must
have stood a statue of the Emperor Marcian (r. 450-7). Fragments of
sculpture remain on the base, including a Nike, or Winged Victory,
in high relief. There is also on the base an elegaic couplet in Latin
which says that the column was erected by the prefect Tatianus in
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