This book launch co-organized by the Netherlands Institute in Turkey and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul will be held on February 10 at the Swedish Institute in Istanbul.

There will be introductions by Fokke Gerritsen (Netherlands Institute in Turkey), Johan Mårtelius (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul) and Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala University).

Snacks and drinks will be served.

RSVP: helin.topal@sri.org.tr (Registration is mandatory)

Please bring a valid ID card with you.

Please click here for the flyer.

This book published by the Cambridge University Press restores the fountains of Roman Byzantium, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul, reviving the sounds, shapes, smells and sights of past water cultures. Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, is surrounded on three sides by sea, and has no major river to deliver clean, potable water. However, the cultures that thrived in this remarkable waterscape through millennia have developed and sustained diverse water cultures and a water delivery system that has supported countless fountains, some of which survive today. Scholars address the delivery system that conveyed and stored water, and the fountains, large and small, from which it gushed. Papers consider spring water, rainwater and seawater; water suitable for drinking, bathing and baptism; and fountains real, imagined and symbolic. Experts in the history of art and culture, archaeology and theology, and poetry and prose, offer reflections on water and fountains across two millennia in one location.

Table of Contents

Introduction Brooke Shilling and Paul Stephenson
1. Where do we go now? The archaeology of monumental fountains in the Roman and early Byzantine East Julian Richard
2. Monumental waterworks in Late Antique Constantinople Paul Stephenson and Ragnar Hedlund
3. Fistulae and water fraud in Late Antique Constantinople Gerda de Kleijn
4. The Silahtarağa statues in context Brenda Longfellow
5. The bronze goose from the hippodrome Rowena Loverance
6. The serpent column fountain Paul Stephenson
7. The culture of water in the 'Macedonian Renaissance' Paul Magdalino
8. When bath became church: spatial fusion in Late Antique Constantinople and beyond Jesper Blid Kullberg
9. Zoomorphic rainwater spouts Philipp Niewöhner
10. Spouts and finials defining fountains by giving water shape and sound Eunice Dauterman Maguire
11. Fountains of paradise in early Byzantine art, homilies, and hymns Brooke Shilling
12. Where did the waters of paradise go after iconoclasm? Henry Maguire
13. 'Rejoice, Spring.' The Theotokos as a fountain in the liturgical practice of Byzantine hymnography Helena Bodin
14. Words, water, and power: literary fountains and metaphors of patronage in eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium Ingela Nilsson
15. Ancient water in fictional fountains: waterworks in Byzantine novels and romances Terése Nilsson
16. The shrine of the Theotokos at the Pege Isabel Kimmelfield
17. A dome for the water: canopied fountains and cypress trees in Byzantine and early Ottoman Constantinople Federica Broilo
18. Sinan's ablution fountains Johan Mårtelius.