Chora Church (Kariye Mosque) History: From Monastery Church to Mosque

Chora Church history at a glance

Start with the sequence. The detail follows below.

A monastery in the fields

The name tells you where the story begins. Chora means land or countryside, and the monastery first stood outside the walls of Constantine (source). Under Theodosius II a new line of land walls was built about 1.5 kilometres further west, with a first phase finished around 413 (source). From then on the monastery sat inside the city, but it kept its country name.

The earliest phases are hard to pin down. Columbia University's study of the building says it was founded probably as early as the 6th century (source). The vaulted substructures under the nave have been dated to the same period, and tradition names a general, Crispus, as a 7th-century founder (source). During the 8th and 9th centuries the monastery was a centre of resistance to Iconoclasm (source). None of that early church is visible today.

The Komnenian rebuilding

The building you walk into starts with one family. Between 1077 and 1081 Maria Doukaina, mother-in-law of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, restored the monastery (source). In the 12th century the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos renovated the church again. The nave took the compact cross plan it still has (source).

Look for Isaac in the inner narthex. He appears as a donor in the large Deesis mosaic, beside Christ and the Virgin (source).

The Latin occupation of 1204 to 1261 was hard on the monastery. It was damaged or neglected through those decades (source).

Theodore Metochites and the 14th-century church

One patron is responsible for almost everything you come to see. Theodore Metochites was a scholar, poet and senior minister of the Byzantine court. He restored the church between 1316 and 1321 (source).

His work was a rebuilding, not a repair. He rebuilt the main dome, replaced the two narthexes and added the side chapel, the parekklesion (source). Then he covered the interior with marble, mosaic and fresco. He also gave the monastery a hospital, a public kitchen and his own book collection (source).

Metochites fell from power in 1328. He died in 1332 and was buried in the monastery he had rebuilt (source). For the images themselves, see our guide to the mosaics and frescoes.

From Kariye church to mosque

Constantinople fell in 1453, but the church was not converted at once. The change came under Sultan Bayezid II, when his grand vizier Atik Ali Pasha turned it into a mosque (source). Turkish sources give the year as 1511 (source). The Greek name became Kariye in Turkish, and the building became Kariye Camii.

The centuries as a mosque left their own marks. An earthquake in 1766 damaged the building, and the architect Ismail Halife repaired it. A second severe earthquake in 1894 damaged the structure and its minaret (source).

Rediscovery: the 1948–58 restoration

In 1945 the mosque became a museum (source). Three years later the Byzantine Institute of America and Dumbarton Oaks began a restoration programme (source).

Thomas Whittemore, director of the Byzantine Institute, started the campaign in the late 1940s. After his death Paul Underwood and the Dumbarton Oaks Field Committee carried it on into the late 1950s (source). The building opened to the public as a museum in 1958 (source). Columbia calls it the first American-sponsored restoration campaign of a major Late Byzantine monument (source).

Museum to mosque again: 2020 and 2024

The museum period ended in the courts. In November 2019 the Turkish Council of State ruled for a return to mosque use. A presidential decree of 21 August 2020 changed the status (source).

The building then closed for restoration. It reopened for Muslim worship on 6 May 2024 (source). The mosaics in the prayer section are now covered with curtains (source).

What this history means for your visit

You are visiting a working mosque with a Byzantine picture programme. That shapes the practical side.

Check the opening hours before you set out, and book tickets ahead. If you want the picture cycles explained in front of the walls, look at the guided tour. To place Chora next to the city's great cathedral, read Chora Church vs Hagia Sophia.