City and the Sacred: Transformation of Religious Architecture in the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

Urban architecture is important for understanding the processes of interaction and semantic connections that societies establish with living space. As the places of worship, in this sense, stand out as works of art with their architectural differences in shape, they also differ from their surroundings with the metaphor of sacredness of which they are identified. The resulting differentiation transforms the perception of place in social memory enabling new interpretations of that place. Thus, throughout history the construction of the places of worship appears as a privileged architectural action that is associated with the moral, sociological, political and cultural situations of cities. In this study, the relationship between architecture and the sacred is discussed in the context of non-Muslim places of worship, especially in the political change process that started with the period of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire. The location of the places of worship as a sacred place in the urban infrastructure, their architectural style, their place in historical and social memory are examined with the processes of cultural transformation and discussed the contribution of this relationship to the historical memory of the city.