7-18-13. Iznik, Turkey
In storied Nicaea, where Constantine kept a mighty palace, long streets of hovels rot; in pious Nicaea, where the mass was chanted in a dozen soaring cathedrals, every church is in ruins; in stalwart Nicaea, where the enemies of Byzantium foundered on mighty walls, the towers are broken by tree roots; tractors and stray dogs process along the ancient avenues. An owl, as the poet says, calls the hours in the palace of the Caesars; and the whine of mopeds echoes among listing columns. Though Nicaea – modern Iznik – is not an inspiring place, it is certainly an evocative one.
When planning my trip to Iznik, I enlisted the help of two guidebooks and an active imagination. For centuries, Nicaea was one of the most important cities in Asia Minor. Most famously the site of the first Ecumenical Council (and later, less famously, of the seventh), Nicaea looms especially large in Byzantine history, when she was a great bulwark against the annual Arab raids of the eighth and ninth centuries. When the crusaders took Constantinople, it was to Nicaea that the greatest Byzantine nobles fled; two generations later, it was from Nicaea that their grandsons regained the ancient capital. Later still, under the Ottomans, Iznik tiles became famous across the Mediterranean world for the delicacy and brilliance of their designs.
The modern city of Iznik sprawls indifferently over the remains of this past. Few tourists make the hour and a half bus trip from Bursa, and those who do pause only to admire the ruins of Haghia Sophia (the church in which the seventh Ecumenical Council is said to have taken place), or perhaps snap a few pictures of the Lefke gate. For my part, as I walked back and forth across the city, I encountered no other visitors.
After exiting my minibus, I found myself before Haghia Sophia, which stands at the ancient crossing of the Constantinople and Lefke roads. In the time of Strabo, one could stand on a pedestal at the crossroad and see all four primary gates at once. Now, were one inclined to attempt this, he might be able to just make out the bus station through a haze of plane trees before being run down by a Melon truck. Haghia Sophia itself, long a ruin, has been recently restored as a working mosque. Fortunately, this work was coupled with an excavation of the surrounding area down to the ancient level (some 12 feet below that of the present street), which provides a sense of the building’s complicated history. Inside, the most evocative remnant of the old church is the apse, ringed with stone benches, where once the bishops of the seventh council sat in conclave. Next, I followed the main N-S thoroughfare (which follows the line of its ancient and medieval predecessors) to the Istanbul Gate.
Of Iznik’s four main gates, only two – those on the roads to Istanbul and Lefke – have survived in their ancient condition. The road leading through the Istanbul gate still functions (I had to dodge no less than three tractors while trying to take my pictures), and the structure itself has never been excavated, with the result that some ten feet of it are buried; it remains, however, very impressive. Nicaea had two wall circuits. The inner and taller ring was erected by the third-century emperor Claudius Gothicus; the outer walls were added nearly a millennium later by the Nicene emperors. The Istanbul gate itself consists of three separate structures: the monumental entrance in the third-century wall, a cruder opening in the Byzantine wall, and an ornamental arch, adorned with gorgon heads, just within. One could write a history of the city from these gates. The gorgon gate was built first, a freestanding monument in the days of the High Empire, when barbarians were unknown and walls unnecessary. Then, after the first Gothic raids of the third century, a new and sterner age, symbolized by the massive inner wall, began; the column drums and bits of marble it contains, fragments of the high Roman city’s stoas and temples, bespeak the end of an era. Finally, the late Byzantine wall, built by the self-crowned king of a petty Empire, stands stunted in the shadow of its great predecessor.
The Lefke gate, where I went next, has been excavated; one can walk on the original flagstones, grooved and worn, through an arch nearly twenty feet high. Though the marble statues are gone from their niches, this is Roman monumentality at its best: fifty-foot towers rise gigantic on either side of the arch, crooked battlements between; few barbarians will have wanted such a challenge. And indeed, one begins to see how, long after the city’s glory days, its depleted garrison could hold off the Ottomans for seven years. Passing back through the gate, I went to find the city museum. It was closed for restoration. I can’t presume to speak on the competence of Iznik’s tourist bureau; but why close your only museum at the height of the tourist season? Presumably, they refer such questions to the people at Bursa. The city’s chief mosque (another Yesil Cami) was remarkable only for the fourteenth century tilework of its minaret and pseudo-Seljuk entrance. Realizing that gates were effectively my only sure bet for sightseeing, I went in search of the Gol Kapi (lake gate), and found that it no longer existed. I was, however, treated to a fine view of the Lake of Nicaea. Some twenty miles long and five wide, this is among the largest bodies of fresh water in Turkey. Ringed with green hills sloping to sun-browned plains, it is also among the most beautiful. I managed to get a few particularly photogenic shots from atop the old seawall.
My next stop was the Roman theater, which –according to my guidebooks –was supposed to be a grass-covered ruin in a quiet olive grove. Instead, I found a giant excavation surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Having closed their only museum, the citizens of Iznik had apparently decided to fence off their most impressive ancient monument. I don’t know who is excavating the theater – it seems to be a municipal project on a massive scale –but more of the structure is visible now that at any point in the last millennium. Unfortunately, this sort of large-scale clearing, however visually satisfying, is very poor archaeological practice. Bulldozer operators are efficient, but seldom publish. The city’s other archaeological site, the Church of the Koimesis, was somehow even more disquieting. A compact building, covered in golden mosaics of the tenth and eleventh centuries, this church survived intact until 1922, when Turkish soldiers dynamited it to spite the Greeks. Today, the remains serve as a playground for neighborhood children, who play leapfrog on the fallen column drums and chase each other over fragments of marble flooring. I can think of few more sobering examples of cultural oblivion.
I turned, finally, to the walls. Though no less neglected or ill-used than the rest of Nicaea’s antiquities, their sheer bulk has made them considerably more durable. Along a street lined with woodcutter’s workshops and derelict homes, the great inner wall stands some forty feet high, a great mass of crumbling brick and stone punctuated by rotting stumps of towers. Finding a section of wall that had collapsed inward, creating a gentle slope of brick fragments to the top of the wall, I clambered into the remains of a circular stairwell, and finally emerged (after a bit of exploring) atop one of the highest towers. I must have been nearly sixty feet above the street, and the views were superb. To my right and left, the walls marched away into a sea of olive trees, eyeless towers gazing on the quiet countryside. Just below, the roofs of Iznik shimmered in the early afternoon heat, dappled by passing cumulus clouds, before the green backdrop of the distant hills. As so often, these few minutes made the trip for me.
I climbed back down, and completed my walk of the circuit (pausing for another panorama at the Yenisehir gate, and accidentally surprising some goats tethered at its base), satisfied with my day of sightseeing. As I rode back to Bursa, I reflected that Iznik, like so many places, simply has no use for her past. For the modern inhabitants, history begins with the Ottomans, and ends with Ataturk. The rest is for tourists.