It stands in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih, in the neighbourhood of Laleli, one kilometre west of the ruins of the Great Palace of Constantinople.

[4] The palace of Myrelaion was built on top of a giant fifth century rotunda which, with an external diameter of 41.8 metres (137.1 feet), was the second largest, after the Roman Pantheon, in the ancient world.

[5] In the tenth century the rotunda was not used anymore, and then it was converted – possibly by Romanos himself – into a cistern by covering its interior with a vaulted system carried by at least 70 columns.

Later the Emperor converted his palace into a nunnery and, after his deposition and death in exile as monk in the island of Prote in June 948, he too was buried in the church.

After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Myrelaion was converted into a mosque by Grand Vizier Mesih Paşa around the year 1500, during the reign of Bayezid II.

[12] In 1965, two parallel excavations led by art historian Cecil L. Striker and by R. Naumann focused respectively on the substructure and on the imperial palace.

[13] The central nave (naos) is surmounted by an umbrella dome, with a drum interrupted by arched windows, which gives to the structure an undulating rhythmus.

[17] This edifice is the first example of a private burial church of a Byzantine emperor, starting so a tradition typical of the later Komnenian and Palaiologan periods.