The Chora
Medieval church and mosque in Istanbul
About
The Chora Church or Kariye Mosque (Turkish: Kariye Camii) was a Byzantine church, now converted to a mosque (for the second time), in the Edirnekapı neighborhood of Fatih district, Istanbul, Turkey. It is famous for its outstanding Late Byzantine mosaics and frescos.
In the 16th century, during the Ottoman era, it was converted into a mosque; it became a museum in 1945, and was turned back into a mosque in 2020 by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The interior is covered with some of the finest surviving Byzantine Christian mosaics and frescoes, which were protected and left in plain sight during Muslim worship throughout much of the Ottoman era. They were restored after the building was secularized and turned into a museum.
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Fall of Constantinople
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Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
Autocephalous church of Eastern Orthodox Christianity
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