Around the Mosque of the Conqueror - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 251

was a church of the four-column type (the columns were replaced
by arches in the Ottoman period); but quite unusually it had five
apses, the extra ones to north and south projecting beyond the rest
of the building. The northern one is now demolished, the southern
one incorporated into the south church. Another unusual, perhaps
unique, feature is that there are four little chapels on the roof, grouped
round the main dome. Some 350 years after this northern church was
built, the Empress Theodora, wife of Michael VIII Palaeologus (r.
1261-82), refounded the monastery and added another church to
the south, an outer narthex for both churches, and a chapel to the
south of her new church; the additions were designed to serve as a
mortuary for the Palaeologan family. The new church, dedicated to
St. John the Baptist, was of the ambulatory type, that is its nave was
divided from the aisles by a triple arcade to north, west and south,
each arcade supported by two columns. (All this was removed in
Ottoman times, but the bases of some of the columns still remain
and one can see the narrow arches of the arcades above, embedded
in the Turkish masonry.) Of its three apses, the northern one was the
southern supernumerary apse of the older church. Thus there were in
all seven apses, six of which remain and make the eastern façade on
the building exceedingly attractive. On the interior a certain amount
of good sculptured decoration survives in cornices and window
frames, especially in the north church.
MEDRESE OF SELIM I
Vatan Caddesi runs along the ancient course of the Lycus River
through a district called Yeni Bahçe, the New Garden. Until recently
this was mostly garden land and a certain number of vegetable
gardens still survive, but there is nothing much of interest along the
new road except the medrese and türbe immediately to be described.
Not far west of Constantine Lips, on the other side of Vatan Caddesi,
a large and handsome medrese has recently been restored. This is
the medrese of Selim I, the Grim, built in his memory by his son,
Süleyman the Magnificent; the architect was Sinan. The 20 cells of
the students occupy three sides of the courtyard, while on the fourth
stands the large and handsome lecture-hall, which was at one point