In June of 2024, the Carmel Institute sponsored a class-trip to Istanbul, Türkiye, for a group of students from AU, Princeton, the University of the District of Columbia, and the University of Rochester. It explored the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantine Orthodoxy.

Before departing from the US, the students read Bettany Hughes' Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities as a general introduction to the history of the Eastern Roman Empire and its capital, Constantinople. The course combined discussions of the book with visits to churches, museums, mosques, and archaeological sites in Istanbul and beyond. In the process, students explored the history of the Byzantine Empire, the evolution of Eastern Orthodoxy, and interconfessional relations throughout the late classical, medieval, and modern era. Dr. Onur İşçi of Kadyr Has University in Istanbul also joined the group on select museum visits, guided some of the tours, participated in discussions, and gladly answered many questions while touring Istanbul

Carmel Institute director and associate professor of history Anton Fedyashin guided the students through museums and urban explorations, and led daily discussions based on the readings. In the process, the students learned to contextualize written texts through museum exhibitions, artistic representations, religious symbolism, and archaeological interpretations. The urban tours related architectural styles to religious, philosophical, and artistic trends. The class also introduced the students to the impact of deep cultural structures on spiritual and visual expressions of medieval and early modern societies. The students also discussed the deep structures, similarities, and differences between Byzantine Christianity and Russian Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam.

On the first full day of the trip, Dr. Fedyashin gave the students a tour of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum as an introduction to eastern Mediterranean geopolitics and the history of Achaean civilization and the classical city-states of Greece, one of which, Megara, established the colony of Byzantion and influenced its evolution towards Constantinople. Exploring the artistic styles that dominated the Eastern Mediterranean region from the Archaic to the early Byzantine periods, the group discussed the literary, philosophical, and geopolitical trends leading up to the split between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. The students also reflected on the intellectual and spiritual legacy of the classical era that the Christian world would inherit, coopt and, in some cases, suppress.

After lunch, Dr. Fedyashin took the students on a tour of the remnants of the ancient hippodrome with its three remaining historic columns, including the unique private hippodrome museum in a Byzantine cistern. Dr. Fedyashin then led the students down to the Sea of Marmara to explore the ancient sea walls, Boukoleon Palace, and the remnants of the imperial Byzantine Palace. The students then crossed the Golden Horn again to complete the day by mounting to the top of the 14th-century Galata Tower to take in the magnificent views of the seven hills of Constantinople. Touring the museums and the city on the way there and back, the group pounded out 29,000 steps on the first day.

The group started the second day with a tour of the medieval world’s largest Orthodox cathedral, the Hagia Sophia. Turned back into a functioning mosque recently, it remains open to tourists between prayer times. However, only the second-floor galleries are accessible. They contain some of the most impressive Byzantine mosaics in Istanbul and even some unique Varangian graffiti. Even though it is 1,500 years old, Hagia Sophia’s sheer size and beauty continue to stun. No wonder that the Rus envoys who entered it famously remarked that they “knew not whether they were in heaven or on earth.”

The group then visited a marvel of early Byzantine engineering, the 6th-century Basilica Cistern, and discussed the important contribution of Roman engineering to the development of Mediterranean and Eurasian civilizations.

After lunch, the group walked across Sultan Ahmed Park to visit the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, often called the Blue Mosque for the stunning white-and-blue tiles that adorn its interior. They listened to the famous dueling call to prayer between the muezzin of Ayasofia and the Sultan Ahmed Mosque.

The students then walked up the ancient Mese Road to the Column of Constantine. The discussions that day focused on the role of the Trojan War in Roman, Byzantine, and Christian Orthodox identity. Once it conquered the Macedonian and Greek territories and turned them into provinces, the Roman Republic began to emphasize Aeneas’s role as the city’s founder. Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine the Great emphasized the same connection with his new capital Constantinople by allegedly encasing the Palladium statue that Aeneas carried with him from Troy inside the base of the famous Constantine Column, which still stands close to Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. The students closed out the second day with a visit to the Grand Bazaar.

The third day began with a tour of the Tekfur Museum, which was part of the Blachernae Palace that stood along the Theodosian Wall of Constantinople. The wall marked Constantinople’s last line of defense in 1453, when the Ottoman army attacked the Byzantine capital.

Dr. Fedyashin gave the students a tour of the site where the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI took leave of his family and imperial court to join the capital’s defensive forces. Restored and reopened in 2017, the Tekfur Palace offers spectacular views from its rooftops upon the extent of the city as it was in the fifteenth century. The group walked along the remaining section of the wall with a stop to see one of the best monuments of Byzantine architecture, the Chora Church. Reopened just a few months before the trip after years of renovation, the Chora Church is also the functioning Kariye Mosque. The Turkish government has made it accessible to the public, however. And people interested in 14th-century Byzantine frescoes and mosaics will find a rare treasure here. Preserved by the Ottomans because they plastered over the original decorations, the art in Chora is stunning. Off the beaten tourist track, it is a visual record of late Byzantine interpretations of three Christian stories. The frescoes depict Judgment Day. The two sets of extensive mosaics depict the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ. After lunch, the group continued their three-hour walk back to the historic district. It passed under the Valentinian Aqueduct, a marvel of Byzantine engineering, and visited Shekhzade and Suleimaniye mosques designed by the renowned Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan.

On the fourth day, the students toured the official residence of the Ottoman sultans, the Topkapi Palace Museum complex, as well as the oldest standing Orthodox church in Istanbul, the Hagia Irene. Over dinner, the group discussed Hughes’s chapters about the building of Hagia Sophia and the fall of Constantinople.

The group started the fifth day by taking a ferry to Büyükada, also known as Principo Island—the largest in the chain of the Prince Islands where Byzantine royals were often exiled. The students enjoyed a swim in the Sea of Marmara—called the Propontis by the ancient Greeks because it was the essential economic and geopolitical link between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The group toured the island and saw the house where Leon Trotsky spent four years of his exile (1929-1933) and wrote his famous history of the Bolshevik Revolution and his memoir My Life.

The group started the sixth day by taking the city ferry to Istanbul’s Kadiköy District to explore the history and architecture of the Asian side with its Orthodox churches, synagogues, and mosques with Drs. Fedyashin and İşçi as guides.

The students spent the last morning in Istanbul exploring the religious buildings on Istiklal Avenue and then made their way to the airport for their long return journey to Washington, DC.