Üçayak: A Byzantine Double-Nave Church in Türkiye
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Turkey
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Byzantine
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page12 sections
History
Üçayak is the ruin of an Eastern Orthodox Byzantine church near Taburoğlu in Türkiye, generally dated to the late tenth or eleventh century and built in the architectural traditions of the later Byzantine period. Its unusually monumental double-nave design combines local traditions with strong influences from Constantinople, making it an exceptionally accomplished example of Byzantine architecture in the region. The site stands in a remote setting in southern Kırşehir Province, near a surviving spring. Byzantine and Seljuk pottery fragments and traces of a Muslim cemetery indicate activity around the church, although its original name and the identity of any associated settlement remain uncertain.
Uncertain Byzantine identity
The ancient or Byzantine name of the location is unknown. Justinianopolis, Pteria, and Mokissos have all been proposed as possible identifications, but none is established. The church itself has been tentatively associated with Basil II and Constantine VIII. Basil II ruled as Byzantine emperor from 976 to 1025, while Constantine VIII was his co-emperor and succeeded him, ruling until 1028. Their possible connection suggests imperial patronage, but the church’s purpose and sponsor remain unresolved.
Several interpretations have been proposed for its foundation. One connects the building with an imperial victory, possibly the battle of Pankalia, where the commander Bardas Phokas defeated the rebel military leader Bardas Skleros. Another regards it as a double funerary church sponsored by a member of the local aristocracy. A further interpretation sees the paired spaces as shrines for two saints or martyrs. The double nave may also have allowed several liturgical ceremonies, or formal acts of Christian worship, to take place at the same time. These possibilities remain proposals rather than confirmed explanations.
Dating and early study
The church is usually placed in the late tenth or eleventh century, and a more recent interpretation dates it to the second half of the eleventh century. Josef Strzygowski earlier assigned it to the fifth or sixth century, but later architectural and archaeological interpretations placed its construction in the later Byzantine period. The building’s original religious arrangement remains difficult to define. Archaeological work has not established a crypt or a structure for holding relics, leaving the funerary and saintly interpretations open to debate.
English travelers first documented the ruins in 1842 and 1843. William Francis Ainsworth visited the church, published an engraving, and proposed that it had replaced the temple of Jupiter at Gadasena mentioned by Strabo, the ancient Greek geographer and historian who described places in Anatolia. By the time of Ainsworth’s engraving, the domes had already disappeared. John Winter Crowfoot visited in 1900 and prepared drawings, photographs, and descriptions, which Strzygowski published in 1903. Crowfoot also recorded a pinkish coating over parts of the exterior brickwork.
Archaeology and later damage
Semavi Eyice, a Turkish art historian and archaeologist, investigated Üçayak in 1966 and 1970. His later work clarified the arrangement of the apses, entrance hall, domes, arches, foundations, and interior spaces. The 1938 Kırşehir earthquake caused the remaining dome arches and associated upper elements to collapse, adding to the losses already suffered by the ruined building.
In 2010, Ahi Evran University announced plans for restoration and conservation, but the proposed work had not begun. Üçayak has held the status of an Immovable Cultural Property of Turkey since 1994, a legal category protecting fixed archaeological, architectural, or historical remains.
Remains
Üçayak was built almost entirely from brick as a longitudinal church with two parallel quadrangular naves. The naves stood side by side and were constructed as a single project, rather than being added one after the other. An internal wall separated them, with a broad opening connecting the two spaces. Each nave had its own dome and sanctuary ending, while both shared an oblong narthex, or entrance hall, at the western end. Stone formed the foundations, and the surviving walls preserve the unusual character of the building’s brick construction.
Paired naves and supports
Double-nave body
The two naves created the church’s defining internal arrangement. Their parallel quadrangular plans and shared entrance hall formed a coordinated double church rather than a main nave with later additions. The walls were built mainly of bricks about 30 to 40 centimetres long and approximately 4 centimetres thick. Courses of brick and mortar were laid in alternating bands of roughly similar thickness, producing a decorative surface as well as a structural wall.
Dome supports
Six principal supports carried the two domes, with three arranged toward the front and three toward the rear. Their surviving pattern gave the ruin its Turkish name, Üçayak, meaning “Three-legged,” because the supports resemble three legs when seen from either the front or the rear. When complete, the church reached an estimated height of about 17 metres with its domes intact. A separate architectural measurement gives the building’s length as 17 metres.
The walls generally incorporated rubble, stones, and other filler materials, with wooden-beam framing used in some places. This differed from the more usual Byzantine method of placing a rubble core beneath an outer brick skin, since Üçayak used a rubble core only in certain areas. Recessed exterior arches formed decorative niches, while the sloping walls and all-brick construction gave the building a distinctive appearance. Comparable recessed-arch techniques occur at Çanlı Kilise in Cappadocia and at the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Nicaea.
Sanctuary ends and entrance hall
Apses
Each nave ended in a semicircular apse, the sanctuary termination of the church, preceded by a rectangular bay. The apses faced northeast. Foundation archaeology indicates that they were polygonal in their external form, provided with windows, and articulated architecturally. They are now largely destroyed, but the central pier between them survives with small sections of the two arches that once connected the sanctuary areas.
The north side of the church had four windows and the south side eight. These openings formed part of the building’s external and internal articulation, while the surviving foundations preserve the general position of the sanctuary ends. The relationship between the paired apses and the two naves remains one of the clearest indications that both parts belonged to the original design.
Narthex foundations
The two naves opened onto a shared oblong narthex. The entrance hall survives chiefly through its foundations, which help establish the building’s western organization and its common access arrangement. Its remains connect the paired interior spaces into a single architectural composition.
Decoration and surviving fabric
The church’s original interior decoration has survived only in fragments. Crowfoot noted faint fresco traces on a pendentive, a curved structural element that transfers a dome’s load onto its supporting space. The traces included what appeared to be haloed heads, and two inscriptions were visible but illegible. Later archaeological investigations recovered fragments of fresco painted in black and gold, pieces of plaster, small sections of coloured window glass, and marble fragments. A barely legible impression of another inscription remains, but its content is unknown.
The domes, sanctuary apses, dome arches, pendentives, and drum sections have collapsed or disappeared. The drum, also called a dome drum, was the cylindrical or polygonal structure on which a dome could rest. Substantial sections of the walls remain, together with some of the principal supports. The surviving walls reach approximately one-half to two-thirds of the building’s reconstructed original height, allowing the paired plan and its unusual support system to remain legible despite the loss of the upper structure.
