Population: 1,700
Old names: Panormos, Antigoni
Festivals: 6 August (Feast of the Transfiguration), 29 August (Feast of St John the Baptist)
Despite being only 1.5 square km in size, Burgazada is the third largest of the Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara and is dominated by Bayraktepe (Flag Hill, 170m, AKA Hristos Tepesi (Hill of Christ)). The view as you approach from the Sea of Marmara is commanded by the domed Church of St. John the Baptist, where, in a dungeon under the narthex, St Methodius the Confessor was imprisoned and tortured in 822 for resisting the Iconoclasm of Emperor Michael II. Eventually he got his own back by becoming patriarch of the Greek community (842-6) and being buried in the old Church of the Holy Apostles which used to stand on the site now occupied by Fatih Cami. The church probably dates back to the 11th century (the apse survives from then) although the current building only went up in 1899.
High on the hillside the church of the Monastery of Hagios Georgios Karyptis (1897) contains a glorious 18th-century iconostasis and some interesting frescoes. Both these church buildings had to be restored after damage done to them by the 1999 Marmara earthquakes.
In theory you can also visit the museum in the Spanudis Könağı, the home for twenty years of the much-loved short-story writer, Said Faik Abasıyanık (1906-54), but in practise you will be lucky to find it open.
The island’s name is believed to be a corruption of ‘pyrgos’, the Greek word for watchtower. As long ago as the 17th century there was a watchtower on top of Bayraktepe which was described by the Ottoman travel writer, Evliya Çelebi. The Monastery of the Transfiguration now stands astride the hill on the site of an ancient Greek temple. It probably started life in the 11th century although it was in ruins by 1547 when it was visited by Petrus Gyllius. Rebuilt in 1869, it became a place of asylum for White Russian refugees following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Above the monastery is a Greek cemetery with a chapel dedicated to Hagios Profitis İlias (Elijah).
Visible off-shore is Kaşıkadasi (Spoon Island), the smallest of the Princes Islands and the only one never to have had a monastery built on it. It’s privately owned so you won’t be able to visit.
Eating
There’s a lovely secluded fish restaurant, the Kalpazankaya (“Counterfeiters’ Rock”), on the island. As the story goes, currency forgers used to hone their coins on the rock in front of it.
Transport info
All the ferries heading to Büyükada from Kabataş, Beşiktaş, Bostancı and Maltepe stop at Burgazada on the way there and back.
