Bodrum Mosque

This structure was originally the Byzantine church of the Myrelaion monastery, built in the tenth century by Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos as a dynastic mausoleum. It stands atop a large circular substructure, a fifth-century rotunda later used as a cistern, giving the compact cross-in-square church an unusually raised base. Converted to a mosque in the late fifteenth century, it takes its Turkish name from that vaulted undercroft. Fire and restoration altered the interior, yet the brickwork and vast round foundation still impress.