Nicea’s Underwater Basilica

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Off the shores of Nicea, archaeologists have uncovered a basilica, which stands over what appears to be an earlier church. Could this church be where the famous Council of Nicea first met in 325 C.E.?

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Endnotes

1.
Evidence of ceramic production at the nearby archaeological sites of Çakirca Mound, Çiçekli Mound, Karadin Mound, and Üyecik Mound has been discovered dating back to the Chalcolithic Age (roughly 5000 B.C.E.). Tiles produced here during the 15th and 16th centuries C.E. represented the pinnacle of Ottoman culture and artistry. Iznik tiles from this period have decorated more than 40 Ottoman mosques and palaces, including the Sultanahmet Mosque (better known as the Blue Mosque) and the Topkapi Palace (home of the Ottoman sultans).

2.
Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.7.1.

3.
Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.10.1.

4.
The tradition is mentioned in the 10th-century Synaxarion of the Church of Constantinople—see Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, vol. 3, trans. by Christopher Hookway (Ormylia, Greece: Convent of the Annunciation of Our Lady, 2001), pp. 244–246—and also in an 11th-century menologion from Byzantium, currently in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland (Walters Manuscript W.521, “Menologion for January”).