Introduction

A contemporary painting of the Church from the late 19th Century.

For centuries, St Stephen’s Church of the Bulgars has held a particular significance in Istanbul as a site that embodies the notions of a lieu de memoire. St Stepehen’s Church allows us to track the changes that occurred during the Ottoman Empire, as well as view the changing nature of architecture during the 19^th Century. These changes, which differ drastically from marked events, fit Nora’s theory that:

‘ … there are those non-events that are immediately charged with heavy symbolic meaning and that, at the moment of their occurrence, seem like anticipated commemorations of themselves; contemporary history, by means of the media, has seen a proliferation of stillborn attempts to create such events … Memory attaches itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events.’

[1] Nora, 22

Rather than symbolising a hugely significant turn in the tide of the Ottoman Empire, St Stephen’s Church of the Bulgars represents the small shifts that occurred over the course of the Empire that allowed for the Bulgarian Exarchate to manifest itself in the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate. Furthermore, the alterations in the physical design of the Church also signify non-events that have contributed to a new identity. The Church thus represents, in Nora’s words, the non-events that were able to bring about variances that now let us see it in retrospect as a marker in the history of Istanbul.

[1] Nora, Pierre, 'Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoires', University of California Press, 1989