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The Bulgarian Church of St. Stephen, on the shores of the Golden Horn in Fener, is one of the most interesting churches in Istanbul.
History
The Church of St. Stephen was built by the Bulgarian community of the city. In 19th century, the Bulgarians would pray at the churches under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was dominated by Greeks. Stefan Bogoridi (1775-1859), an Ottoman Bulgarian diplomat, obtained permission from Sultan Abdülmecid I to build a Bulgarian Orthodox church. He donated his wooden house and converted it into a church. It opened on October 9, 1849, and became an important site of the Bulgarian National Revival. In fact, the Ottoman royal decree establishing the Bulgarian Exarchate was read in the church on February 28, 1870.
The wooden church burned down and the community decided to build a cast iron church in its place. Ottoman Armenian architect Hovsep Aznavur (1854-1935) designed the building and R. Ph. Waagner of Austria won a contest to produce the prefabricated cast iron parts.
The parts weighed 500 tons and were shipped from Vienna to Constantinople along the Danube River and through the Black Sea. The Church of St. Stephen took a year and a half to build and finally inaugurated on September 8, 1898.
Construction
The skeleton of the church is made of steel and covered in metal panels. The panels are attached together by nuts, bolts, rivets, and welding. It’s now one of the only surviving prefabricated cast iron churches in the world.
The Church of St. Stephen underwent a long renovation from 2011 to 2018, costing over 15,000,000₺. It reopened on January 8, 2018, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Boris present at the ceremony.
Cemetery
In the church yard is a small cemetery. Among the burials is Hilarion of Makariopolis (1812-1875), an Orthodox bishop and one of the leaders of the struggle for an autonomous Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
Metoha Building
Finally, across the street from the Church of St. Stephen is the Metoha Building. The three story stone structure was built in 1850 and contains 25 rooms. It was used as a publishing house for over 20 Bulgarian newspapers and magazines. It also served as the first Bulgarian school in the city beginning in 1857. The Bulgarian Theological Seminary used the building when it moved to Constantinople from Edirne in 1892. The building was restored and opened as a museum of Bulgarian history in Istanbul on May 24, 2016.
