A Phantom in Byzantine Constantinople: Revisiting the Mangana Complex and the Church of St. George of Mangana Through Archaeology

The Mangana complex, constructed on the eastern slopes of the Acropolis of Byzantion by Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos, was one of the largest imperial monastic complexes of Byzantine Constantinople. After centuries of continuous use, the complex fell into oblivion following the Ottoman conquest in 1453. The 1921 fieldwork conducted by Robert Demangel and Ernest Mamboury in the gardens of the Topkapi Palace in Sarayburnu rekindled scholarly interest in this Middle Byzantine complex. Based on Demangel and Mamboury’s monograph, scholars who had no access to the site began constructing detailed narratives on the archaeological remains in Sarayburnu, reaffirming the Mangana’s pivotal role in Middle Byzantine architecture. This chapter revisits previous scholarship on the Mangana complex and proposes a new interpretation of textual and archaeological evidence in light of new findings from rescue excavations conducted by the Istanbul Archaeological Museums after 1923 and, more recently, between 2018 and 2021. Based on this evidence, this chapter argues that these recent archaeological projects have provided critical information on the architecture of the archaeological site in Sarayburnu and that previous scholarly narrative constructed by architectural historians were developed hypothetically based on scant physical evidence, thereby giving an imaginary life to the Mangana complex.