Helenopolis

Listen first. Water moves against a low shore. Gulls cry over a shallow lagoon, and somewhere a truck hums across a bridge high above the gulf. The air smells of salt and reeds. This is not a place of grand ruins. It is a place where you have to imagine, and the imagining starts with the water in front of you.

Helenopolis is the old name for a town on the southern shore of the Gulf of İzmit, across the water from Gebze. Most scholars place it near the Hersek peninsula and its lagoon, in today's Yalova province. Long before it carried that name, the settlement was called Drepanon. The word means sickle in Greek, and some writers link it to the curved spit of land that hooks into the sea here.

So why the new name? It comes from one woman — Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. In the fourth century, Constantine renamed Drepanon in her honour. Helenopolis simply means the city of Helena. An old tradition says Helena was born here, perhaps to a family of modest means. Historians still debate that claim, so treat it as a strong local tradition rather than a settled fact.

Helena is remembered today as a Christian saint. Late in life she travelled to the Holy Land, and later stories credit her with finding relics linked to the life of Jesus. Many of those stories grew in the centuries after her death. What is certain is her rank and her influence. A small harbour town on this gulf received the name of an empress, and that name carried it into the history books.

There is a second reason Constantine cared about this shore. A Christian teacher named Lucian of Antioch was executed in the early fourth century, and his remains were buried at Drepanon. His tomb became a place of pilgrimage. Here is a detail many visitors never hear. In the year 337, Constantine fell seriously ill. He came to this area to bathe in its warm waters and to pray at the martyr's shrine.

He did not recover. The emperor moved on toward Nicomedia, the old name of modern İzmit, at the eastern end of the gulf. He died near there that same year. Ancient writers report that he was baptised only in his final days. So the last journey of the man who changed the religious course of the Roman world passed along this coastline. The quiet shore in front of you sits inside that story.

The town kept a place in the Byzantine world after Constantine. The Byzantine Empire was the eastern, Greek-speaking continuation of Rome, ruled from Constantinople, modern Istanbul. Helenopolis became the seat of a bishop. One of those bishops was Palladius, who lived in the early fifth century. He wrote a famous book about the desert monks of Egypt and Palestine, known as the Lausiac History. Students of early Christian life still read it today.

In the sixth century, the emperor Justinian took an interest in the town. The historian Procopius wrote that Justinian improved it, including works for its water supply and public baths. That fits a pattern. This coast was a natural stopping point for travellers crossing between Constantinople and the inland cities of Anatolia, the great peninsula that forms most of modern Turkey. Boats crossed the gulf, and roads ran south from here.

Now for a darker chapter, and a second surprise. In 1096, thousands of ordinary pilgrims arrived on this coast. They were part of the People's Crusade, a loose army led by a preacher called Peter the Hermit. They camped at a place called Civetot, close to Helenopolis. Many were poorly armed and badly organised. Turkish forces destroyed most of them in battle that autumn. It was one of the bloodiest moments before the main armies of the First Crusade even arrived.

After the medieval period, the town faded. Earthquakes, wars and shifting trade routes all played a part. The stone of old buildings was often reused elsewhere, a common fate along this coast. Today you will not find a walled city or a standing cathedral. Archaeologists have worked in the Hersek area in recent years, and scattered remains suggest the scale of what once stood here. Much of Helenopolis still lies under the soil and the sea.

So take a moment with what you can see. The lagoon behind the spit is shallow and calm, and it attracts herons, egrets and other water birds. Reeds move in the wind. Look east and west along the gulf and you will understand why people settled here. The water is sheltered. The far shore is close. For a traveller in a small boat, this was a safe and obvious place to land.

Then look up at the modern world. The long suspension bridge across the gulf, the Osmangazi Bridge, opened in 2016. It touches land near the Hersek cape, not far from where you stand. Its cables carry traffic over the same crossing that ferrymen worked in Roman and Byzantine times. The route has not changed very much. Only the speed has changed — minutes in a car instead of hours under sail.

From the Gebze side, you can see this shore as a low line of green and grey beyond the water. On a clear day the view gives you a sense of geography that maps often hide. Constantinople lay to the west. Nicomedia lay to the east. Helenopolis sat between them, a small town on a busy waterway, close enough to power to receive an empress's name.

Before you leave, stand still for one more minute. Notice the curve of the land into the water, the sickle shape that may have given Drepanon its first name. Listen to the birds over the lagoon and the faint hum from the bridge. An emperor came here hoping to heal. Pilgrims camped here on their way to war. Now it is quiet again, and the shore keeps its secrets under the reeds.