Uncovering History

An aerial photograph of the excavation site of the Theodosian Harbor in 2005.

A diagram of the shipwrecks found at the Yenikapi excavation site from 2005.

In 2004, the city planners of Istanbul were faced with two problems. Heavy traffic congestion that was slowing the city down and was making life in the city so much worse, and how to connect Europe and Asia more effectively. Therefore, to alleviate the traffic congestion, the city planners decided that they were going to build an underground rail system to treat the traffic, underneath the Bosphorus Strait. To do so, it was necessary to dig into the area of the buried Theodosian Harbor. Upon digging, they soon discovered the ancient harbor. After the discovery, the urban planning project quickly spun into an archaeological excavation. In 2005, the Istanbul Archaeological Museums created excavations at the Uskudar, Sirkeci and Yenikapı station sites of the Marmaray Project, which is the urban planning project to unite Asia and Europe through Istanbul by rail for the first time in history through under the Bosporus.

The discovery of the Theodosian Harbor sparked a renewed interest into the Byzantine version of Istanbul (Constantinople), and also renewed the harbor's status as a lieu de memoire. Though it was hidden and forgotten under the silt, its discovery and subsequent preservation and interest displays its importance to the history of the city, and will always stand to show the history of Constantinople in the first millennium.

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Pulak, Cemal, Rebecca Ingram, and Michael Jones. "Eight Byzantine Shipwrecks from the Theodosian Harbour Excavations at Yenikapı in Istanbul, Turkey: An Introduction." International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 44.1 (2014): 39-73. Web.

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