Vita gazette – A Roman statue unearthed on St Polyeuctus’ church site, once Constantinople’s largest church.

At Saraçhane Archaeology Park, where the Church of St. Polyeuctus is situated, excavation work by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) teams found a statue that is thought to date back to the Roman era.

A statue was discovered approximately 1 meter (3 feet) deep in the fill on the north side of the main structure where excavation work was being done. The marble statue’s head, legs, and right arm were found to be broken at shoulder height. The figure, dressed in a himation that exposes the upper right side of its body, is thought to date from the Roman period. The exact age and period of the statue will be determined after further examination.

There are modest ruins of a structure that was once the largest church in Constantinople and was constructed to resemble the Solomon Temple in Jerusalem in a small park right in the middle of Istanbul’s Fatih neighbourhood.

Before the erection of the new Hagia Sophia by Emperor Justinian in 537, the Church of Saint Polyeuctus was the largest temple in Constantinople.

Anicia Juliana, daughter of Olybrius, a former Western Roman emperor, built the church. The church, which was the most magnificent structure of Constantinople in the years it was built, was dedicated to a Christian martyr named Saint Polyeuctus.

The Church of St. Polyeuctus, built in A.D. 524, was destroyed after being used for various purposes. However, excavation works were carried out in the church after some historical artefacts belonging to the church were discovered during the construction of an underpass in the 1960s.

The artefact may have been dedicated to Asclepieion, the god of medicine in ancient Greece, along with a Byzantine archaeological excavation in the field; there is data from pre-Byzantine Roman archaeology.

About the statue, they think that this finding, a Roman-period statue, dates back to the second century A.D. With these studies, they hope to find the lost head or other parts of the body.”