The Kariye Mosque, formerly the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, stands in the Edirnekapı quarter of Fatih, about a hundred metres from the Theodosian walls. It was the centre of the Chora monastery, a large complex of which only the church survives.
What it is today matters for a visit. The building served as a church for fifty-eight years after the conquest, became a mosque in 1511, was declared a national monument in 1945 and a museum in 1948, and was for decades among the most visited museums in Türkiye. In 2019, after an annulment by the Council of State, it passed to the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and on 6 May 2024 it opened for worship.
What people come for are the mosaics and frescoes, and they survive because of how the conversion was done. When the church became a mosque the Christian images and inscriptions were not destroyed but covered with a thin coat of paint and lime, and that is what carried them to the present.
The finest of them belong to one man and one short span of years. Theodore Metochites, Grand Logothete under Andronikos II and the highest official in the state after the emperor, lived beside the monastery and rebuilt it; he was named its ktetor, or founder, and spent his fortune on the work. The outer narthex and the parekklesion — the side chapel — were added then, and their interiors were decorated between 1310 and 1317. He endowed his library on the foundation and kept rooms inside it; later exiled, he returned in 1330 to live there as a monk and was buried in the funerary chapel he had prepared.
The history behind that campaign runs long. A first building is placed by some sources in 536, under Justinian I, though the date is not certain; it was thrown down by the earthquake of 6 October 557 before it was finished, and a larger monastery was raised in its place. The house appears in written sources from the eighth century, was damaged during iconoclasm, and was enlarged with three new chapels after the cult of icons was restored in 843. In the eleventh century the Komnenoi moved to the Blachernae Palace nearby and the church gained by the neighbourhood: Maria Doukaina rebuilt it, and around 1120 it was rebuilt again on a new plan. It lay in ruins after the Latin occupation of 1204–1261, and the great repair that produced the mosaics followed the return of the Palaiologoi.
Because the monastery stood outside the walls it was given the Greek name Chora — the countryside, the land beyond the city. The last thing Byzantine sources record of it is the bringing here, during the siege of 1453, of the icon of the Virgin believed to protect the city. The building itself took no damage in the conquest. Atik Ali Paşa, a grand vizier of Bayezid II, converted it in 1511: the images were plastered over, a minaret replaced the bell tower at the south-west corner, and a marble element was added at the south-east.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İstanbul as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.8 °C in January to 24.7 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in July (22 mm). Long-term means for 1950-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Getting there
- Access
- It can be reached by İETT buses and minibuses.
