Arslan Hane, Istanbul

The structure was located in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih, in the neighborhood of Sultanahmet, about south of the Hagia Sophia, not far from the Column of Justinian and to the left of the Chalke Gate of the Great Palace, both disappeared. ==History==

Byzantine Age of the Hippodrome of Constantinople by Ottoman Miniaturist Matrakci Nasuh, appeared in 1536. The Arslan Hane is the large red-orange domed building with a terrace, just left of the blooming meadow (the former Hippodrome site) and right of the Hagia Sophia In the tenth century, Emperor Romanos Lekapenos erected near the Chalke a chapel dedicated to Christ Chalkites, the name of the image of Jesus that adorned the main entrance of the Chalke. This image - being one of the major religious symbols of the city - had great importance during the Iconoclastic period. The shrine was so small that it could contain no more than fifteen people. the ground floor of the building was used to house the wild animals (lions - whence its Turkish name, Arslan hane - tigers, elephants, etc.) intended for the court of the Sultan in the nearby Topkapı Palace. At the same time, the upper floor had its windows walled and was used to lodge the fresco painters and miniaturists active in the Sultan's Palace (). In 1802 the upper floor caught fire, and in 1804 the building was demolished. There were numerous fires in the following years in the new edifices built on the site, until in 1846-48 the Swiss Italian architect Gaspare Fossati built the main seat of the new Istanbul University on the same site. ==Description==

About the first chapel it is only known that two marble columns used for its construction were brought from Thessaloniki. A representation of the city belonging to the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, another of 1532 painted by Nasûh al Matrakçî, and an engraving in a geography book published in Venice in 1804 are the only three extant images of the church, although in the latter the building is represented as already in ruins.), and lavishly decorated with paintings and mosaics. The remains of these, as well as of inscriptions in Greek, were still visible in the interior until the eighteenth century. John Tzimiskes endowed the church with several relics, among them the alleged sandals of Jesus and the hair of St. John the Baptist, and had his tomb, made of gold and enamel, built in the crypt. == References ==