Along the Golden Horn - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 313

of the Turkish Republic. It is also a research centre for women's
studies.
About 150 metres farther along, we see on our right a very
astonishing church indeed, that of St. Stephen of the Bulgars. This and
the building opposite, the former Exarchate, were erected in 1871, at
a time when the Bulgarian Church was asserting its independence
from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople. The
church of St. Stephen is a Gothic building entirely constructed of
cast iron! The church was prefabricated in Vienna and shipped down
the Danube in sections, and then erected here on the shore of the
Golden Horn. Not only the outside but the interior as well is of cast
iron; even what appear to be panels of marble revetment prove on
one's knocking them to be iron, likewise the seemingly sculptured
ornamentation! Nevertheless, the church is rather handsome, both
its interior and exterior, and it is kept in excellent repair for the small
community of Bulgarians who still worship there. The church is
surrounded by a pretty and well-tended garden in which are buried
several metropolitans of the Bulgarian Church.
Continuing along in the same direction, we come after about
250 metres to the Metochion of Mount Sinai, the oldest and
grandest of the meta-Byzantine mansions of the Fener. This house
is typical of the few remaining Feneriote mansions, chiefly of
the seventeenth century, erected apparently in a continuation or
modiication of the old Byzantine style. They are constructed of
alternate courses of stone and brick; each storey projects over the
street, corbelled out on elaborate consoles; the cornice under the
roof consists of courses of brick in saw-tooth design. They are
very stoutly built, with massive walls and iron doors and window-
shutters, more like fortresses than ordinary houses. The house
which we are now looking at is of particular interest because it was
for nearly three centuries the Metochion of the Monastery of St.
Catherine on Mount Sinai. The Monastery of St. Catherine, first
founded by Justinian, was for long a semi-autonomous church
under the control of the Patriarchate of Alexandria. The Monastery,
like many others, has always been represented in Constantinople
by one of its archimandrites, who first took up residence in this