Lecture by Brigitte Pitarakis at Pera Museum: Damarlarında Hayat Dolaşır! Bizans’ta İstanbul Bir Şifa Kenti miydi? An Evaluation of Health, Healing, and the Urban Ecosystem (in Turkish)
Time: 18.30
This lecture invites us to consider late Byzantine Constantinople as a healing city. In Byzantine literary tradition, the city is metaphorically identified with the human body and conceived as a living organism—one that becomes ill, recovers, and is revived in response to historical upheavals. After the Latin occupation (1204–1261), the recapture and restoration of Constantinople during the Palaiologan period appear in contemporary texts as a narrative of rebirth and resilience. In this context, the Byzantine capital emerges as a healing body nourished by medical knowledge and capable of continuously renewing itself.
The city’s lifelines—its water systems—together with the maintenance practices that ensured the continuity of this infrastructure and the presence of green spaces, constituted invisible yet indispensable elements of urban health; they reflected the city’s capacity for constant regeneration. In Byzantine medicine, water occupied a central place in both therapeutic and preventive practices, while diseases and epidemics caused by polluted water and air were considered among the principal concerns of medical discourse. Organized as part of the March 14 Medicine Day, the lecture examines how bodily and spiritual health were conceived as a whole in the Byzantine world through developments in medicine and pharmacology, purification practices, and spaces of healing. It offers a historical perspective on the ancient relationship between city, environment, and health.
The event will take place at the Pera Museum Auditorium, is free of charge, and will be conducted in Turkish. No reservation is required.
For more information: https://www.iae.org.tr/Aktivite-Detay/Damarlarinda-Hayat-Dolasir-Bizansta-Istanbul-Bir-Sifa-Kenti-miydi-Saglik-Sifa-ve-Kentsel-Ekosistem-Uzerine-Bir-Degerlendirme-Brigitte-Pitarakis/1299
