What was once the Holy Saviour in Chora is today the Kariye Mosque. It stands at Edirnekapı, in Fatih, roughly a hundred metres back from the Theodosian walls. Of a large monastery only the church is left. People cross the city for its mosaics and frescoes, most of them from a few years at the start of the fourteenth century, and for the way they came through the centuries the building spent as a mosque.
Why it is called Chora
Chora is Greek for the countryside, the land beyond the city, and the monastery took the name because it lay outside the walls. Some sources put a first building here in 536, in the reign of Justinian I, though that date is uncertain; an earthquake on 6 October 557 brought it down before it was complete, and a bigger monastery replaced it. The house is mentioned in writing from the eighth century on. It suffered under iconoclasm and gained three new chapels once icons were restored in 843.
In the eleventh century the Komnenoi made the Blachernae Palace, close by, their residence, and the church did well out of its new neighbours. It was rebuilt by Maria Doukaina, then again around 1120 on a different plan. During the Latin occupation of 1204–1261 it fell into ruin.
Theodore Metochites and the mosaics
The church you see is the result of one man's fortune. Theodore Metochites, who held the office of Grand Logothete for Andronikos II and stood second only to the emperor, lived next to the monastery and took on its rebuilding after the Palaiologoi returned. As ktetor, the founder of record, he paid for the work himself. The outer narthex was his addition, as was the parekklesion or side chapel, and he had their interiors decorated between 1310 and 1317. He gave the house his library and kept rooms there; after a period of exile he came back in 1330 as a monk, and he lies in the funerary chapel he had made ready for himself.
How the images survived
The last event Byzantine writers record at the Chora is the siege of 1453, when the icon of the Virgin held to guard the city was carried here. The conquest left the building undamaged, and it stayed a church for fifty-eight years. In 1511 Atik Ali Paşa, grand vizier of Bayezid II, made it a mosque. At the south-west corner a minaret replaced the old bell tower, and the images and inscriptions were not broken off but hidden under a thin layer of paint and lime. That covering is what preserved them.
The building's modern status has changed several times. It was listed as a national monument in 1945 and became a museum in 1948, for decades one of the most visited in Türkiye. In 2019, after a ruling of the Council of State, it was transferred to the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and since 6 May 2024 it has been a mosque again.
Tekfur Sarayı: the last of the Blachernae palace
Along the walls at Edirnekapı stands Tekfur Sarayı, the southernmost and highest part of the Blachernae complex that the emperors lived in from the twelfth century. Its three floors fill the gap between the Theodosian land walls and an older line of wall; who built it, and when, is not known for sure. In 1718-19, when it was decided to produce tiles in İstanbul, the workshop was placed in its courtyard, and tiles from it still go by the palace's name.
A fire in 1864 gutted much of the building, and by the start of the twentieth century it was a ruin propped on iron posts, which the repairs of 1955-1970 swapped for marble columns. The İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality restored it from 2005 to 2014, and on 17 June 2019 it opened as the Tekfur Sarayı Museum, with tile, glass and pottery found on the site. Within a short walk are the Anemas Dungeon, vaults of the same palace that run down towards the Golden Horn, with the Kazasker Ivaz Efendi Mosque standing above them.
Two sultans on the hills of Fatih
The district takes its name from the Fatih Mosque, the complex Mehmed II built for himself between 1463 and 1470. Its medrese, hospital, hospice, soup kitchen, caravanserai, bath, school and library spread over 108,000 square metres, and the conqueror's tomb stands in front of the mosque with that of his wife Gülbahar Hatun beside it.
On the hill above the Golden Horn, Süleyman the Magnificent built the Sultan Selim Mosque in his father's name, and the octagonal tomb of Selim I faces its mihrab. Inside, a kaftan lies over the sarcophagus: Selim is said to have left instructions that it should cover him, the one spattered with mud by his teacher's horse on the way to the Egyptian campaign.
Each of these places has its own guide on this site with directions and visiting details.
