This paper focuses on the transformation of the research on the Byzantine layer of Istanbul by the Greek Orthodox intellectuals such as Alexander Paspates throughout the long nineteenth century. Spanning from an antiquarian interest in the historical texture of the city in the early decades of the nineteenth century, this paper traces this transformation into the emergence of a new, proto-(urban) archaeological research effort accompanied by institutionalization materialized by the Greek Literary Society in the second half of the nineteenth century. As widely known, the historiography of the Byzantine Empire and its material residue is extremely pertinent to the formation of Modern Greek identity from the eighteenth century onwards. However, an exclusivist focus on the research conducted by the Greek Orthodox intellectuals on the Byzantine texture of İstanbul bears the risk of falling into the traps of “nationalism,” even more so “nationism” in Cemal Kafadar’s terms. According to Kafadar, despite their alertness to the pitfalls of nationalism or their open dismissal of its ideology, many scholars continue to base their analysis in national terms, with the result that ethnic-national identities and cultures still dominate the scholarship. For all their value, such identity-driven studies tend to underestimate the multifarious structure of the broader Ottoman society ignores the significant extra- and supra-communal impact of these intellectuals, their works, and institutions. In this light, this paper follows the Latourian terminology in employing the historical material texture of Constantinople as a ‘non-human actant’ in the form of an ‘object of knowledge’ which enables the ‘formation of a new social.’ Such an approach has the potential to allow this study to go beyond the established categories within Ottoman historiography, and convey a far more complex picture, especially when it comes to ethnoreligious communities such as the Greek-Orthodox. Accordingly, in this paper, the Byzantine texture of Istanbul is an object of knowledge that creates links between various actors that were, in one way or another, engaged with that object. The representation of this object is formed through the accumulation of knowledge on the historical urban material context and its emergence in different solid forms, such as books, journals, maps, illustrations, and the like. Through close scrutiny of examples of these representations and the network that surrounds them, the paper investigates the transformation of knowledge on the historical material context of Istanbul, that is, the Byzantine heritage, from ‘urban antiquarianism’ to ‘urban archaeology’ throughout the nineteenth century.