If you're travelling along the Sea of Marmara coast road from Cankurtaran to Yedikule the next suburb you'll come to after Yenikapı is Kocamustafapaşa, the official modern name for Samatya, a district still known to many İstanbullus by its original Byzantine name.
This is a district that is fast reinventing itself as a second Kumkapı, with an ever expanding choice of fish restaurants and meyhabes ringing the picturesque main square. Unusually full of Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches, a few of them still in use today, it's also a neighbourhood that has proved very popular with TV film producers, making it the Kuzguncuk of the European side of İstanbul. But whereas Kuzguncak still retains a fair number of pretty old wooden houses, Samatya is solidly modern apartment blocks albeit apartment blocks with stunning sea views from their top floors.
Samatya was resettled with Armenians from Bursa after the Conquest of Constantinople and soon found itself locked in combat with the local Greek community for possession of the historic Sulu Manastır (Water Monastery), a church that had stood inside the Samatya Gate in the Propontine Sea Walls since early Byzantine times. The quarrel became so heated that the church came to be nicknamed the Kanlı Kilise (Bloody Church). Today it's firmly in the hands of the Armenians although the patriarchate is now based down the road in Kumkapı. Even today there is a sizeable Armenian community here.
If you come down the steps from Kocamustafapaşa station and turn left you will pass through what was once the Samatya Gate in the Propontine Sea Walls. Turn right on the seaward side and walk along the walls and you will come eventually to the 19th-century Armenian Church of Surp Hovhannes (John the Baptist) behind which are concealed the original Narlıkapı (Pomegranate Gate) and an unrestored stretch of the old wall.
If, instead, you turn right at the bottom of the steps from the station and walk uphill you will come to the picturesque main square and its gathering of meyhanes. Some of the restaurants such as Develi have been here forever, while others are Johnny Come Latelys that have yet to reveal whether they have the necessary staying power.
Interior of Hagios GiorgiosIf you bear left at the side of the square and follow the winding roads uphill you will pass two (locked) 19th-century Greek Orthodox churches: Hagios Nikolaos and Christou Analipsis. Arriving on the narrow main road through Samatya you can turn right to find the externally plain Armenian Church of Hagios Giorgios which still offers Sunday services. Past this church stands the Greek Orthodox Church of Hagios Menas, a recent rebuild of a church dating back to 1833 that was destroyed during the anti-Greek rioting of 1955. Beneath this church lurks a truly venerable relic: the outer wall of the Mausoleum of Sts Karpos and Papylos, obscure Romans who were martyred for their faith duing the 3rd-century Decian persecurion of the Christians. Sadly, you can only glimpse a small stretch of circular wall behind the local teahouse if permitted to do so by the owner.Alternatively you can turn left at the main road and walk west towards Yedikule until you come to a street on the left signed for the Church of St John the Baptist of Studion. Today a pathetic shell of a building, this church was originally bulit between 454 and 463 making it older than both Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) and the Church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus (Küçük Ayasofya). Of that original building, however, little survived its destruction during the Fourth Crusade of 1204 and a subsequent rebuld in 1293. After the Conquest it was converted into the İmrahor İlyas Bey Cami which was, in turn, destroyed by an earthquake in 1894.
Unfortunately although the church is a designated museum you need to apply to the authorities at Ayasofya for permission to view the Byzantine mosaic floors that still survive inside (the most beautiful are in any case on display at the Benaki Museum in Athens), not an option available to most casual visitors. Before turning away, though, spare a thought for the days when thousands of monks lived in this neighbourhood, busily turning out stunning illuminated manuscripts under the stewardship of Abbot Theodore the Studite (759-826).
While in this part of Samatya you might also like to take a look at the Greek Orthodox Church of Sts Constantine and Helena, built in 1805. Its congregation was almost entirely made up of immigrants from the province of Karaman in Central Anatolia who wrote their Turkish in the Greek script, a linguistic aberration known as Karamanlı.
To find the much-fought-over Kanlı Kilise (actually Surp Kevork or the Sulu Manastır (Water Monastery) ) you need to head inland behind Hagios Menas. This was originally the Greek Orthodox Church of Panagia Peribleptos, built in 1031 and destroyed, like the Studion Monastery, during the chaos caused by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It, too, was restored once the Byzantines were reinstated in power but unlike the monastery it continued as a Christian place of worship after the Conquest when Sultan Mehmed II gave it to the Armenians who had been settled here to revive the area. Today the church, restored yet again in the 1990s, stands in a walled compound together with an Armenian school that is still operating. In the grounds there is also an ayazma (sacred spring). Pat YaLe
Along the Marmara sea coast, Kumkapı and Samatya are the most notable neighborhoods. Kumkapı is closer to the shore, while Samatya's location is a bit more inland. Located close to the sea wall, Kumkapı (which translates to ‘sand gate’) has a plethora of fish restaurants in the main square close to the Marmara sea coast. Among small mosques, a few nineteenth century Armenian Apostolic and Greek Orthodox Churches can be found and the area is a great place to wander. On Friday and Saturday nights the mentioned fish restaurants get very rowdy with a lot of rakı drinking and songs sung to live fasıl music.
With a deep history, the Samatya neighborhood has made efforts to put itself back on the map. While the area has many notable churches, mosques, and monasteries, for locals Samatya is the place to go for the genuine meyhane experience. In the main square, the small restaurants that serve mainly rakı and meze, compose the feel of deep companionship shared over conversation and sometimes dancing in the middle of the street, that is the essence of Turkish culture. Not until you have pulled your slim rakı glass out of an ehli keyif, closed your eyes to really concentrate on the clarinet solo being played by the wandering musicians at the table next to you, can you truly appreciate the Turkish meyhane culture in Samatya.
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