Sardis Church D (the Cathedral)

Department Archive
Collection Byzantine Research Fund
Reference No. BRF/02/02/03/014
Level Item
Place Sardis
Dates 1873
Donor/Creator Trotman, Corporal J.
Scope and Content View of the landscape from the church. This is a Hellenic Society photograph. It is numbered in pencil (H.S. 3162) at the back. Further annotation in pencil survives.
Further information The ancient kingdom of Lydia is located in western Anatolia. According to Herodotus King Gyges founded a dynasty in the late 8th to the 7th c. B.C. which introduced the use of gold and silver coinage. Sardis was the capital city and the main source of Lydian cultural remains to the present. In 546 it became a satrapy, and later, after the death of Alexander the Great, it was ruled by the Seleucids. In 133 it became a Roman province and under the Byzantine emperor Herakleios (610-641) was part of the Anatolikon thema (province), later of the Thrakision and, finally, of the Byzantine empire of Nicaea.

The so called 'Church D' was probably the cathedral of Sardis. This large domed basilica located on the northern side of the highway of the city not far from the Agora appears to be dated to the Justinian period.
Related records [BSA SPHS 01/1246.3162], Sardes: View from the church looking E. showing the plain, 1873