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Church of Saint George Edirnekapou

The Church of Saint George Edirnekapou lies close to the Adrianoupolis Gate (Edirnekapou) and only a short distance from the shrine of Mihrimah, daughter of Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent.
In one sense the church is the successor of an earlier Byzantine monastery destroyed by the Ottomans in 1555 in order to make way for the shrine of Mihrimah. The church was erected by special permission of the Sultan. "Permission having been granted", wrote Skarlatos Byzantios, "twelve years later [...] they built the still extant timber-roofed Church of Saint George which they named a Monastery in memory of the one that first stood there [...J".
Inscriptions inform us that the church was repaired in 1726 and completely rebuilt in 1836.
As Gedeon tells us, at one time the church was remarkably prosperous because only a short distance beyond the Adrianoupolis Gate there used to be windmills owned by Greeks and Bulgars. The guilds of all those who had anything to do with flour, such as millers and corn merchants, bakers, bread-roll sellers and Rusk-makers, in one way or another took the church under their protection.

Ismini Kapandai

Churches in Constantinople

Nikos Ghinis – Constantinos Stratos



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