Το Εθνικό Ορφανοτροφείο στην Πρίγκηπο της Κωνσταντινούπολης

Abstract

It was Patriarch Germanos IV, during his second term of office, in 1851, who
conceived the idea of opening an institution in Constantinople to house and care for the
orphaned children of Greeks. Ten years later, first a primary school and then the 'Greek
school' began to operate in the orphanage, with two teachers and eighty pupils. Until
1902, the orphanage was a small but important member of the National Charitable
Establishments of Constantinople, and in that year it was moved to the timber
mansion-house known as the Pringipos Palas on Christ's Hill in the district of
Pringipos. In addition to the usual elementary education, the children also received
training in such skills as sewing, shoemaking, joinery and metalwork. The orphanage
functioned normally until 1964, when the Turkish authorities ordered the building to be
vacated on the grounds that it was a fire hazard and the inmates' lives were at risk. The
trustees' application to erect a stone building on the same site was met with no
response; and a noble, humane institution for the relief of the Greek community's
orphans thus became a thing of the past.