Chora Mosque

The Chora Church or Kariye Mosque (Turkish: Kariye Camii) is 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 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.

The church in the western Fatih district of İstanbul. It stands on sedimentary layers and anthropogenic infills on a slope descending towards the north. It is oriented east-west, as are typical Byzantine churches throughout the city.

The original, 4th-century monastery containing the church was outside Constantinople's city walls. Literally translated, the church's full name was the Church of the Holy Saviour in the Country. It is therefore sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Saint Saviour". However, "The Church of the Holy Redeemer in the Fields" would be a more natural rendering of the name in English. The last part of the Greek name, Chora, referring to its location originally outside of the walls, became the shortened name of the church. The name must have carried symbolic meaning, as the mosaics in the narthex describe Christ as the "Land of the Living" and Mary, the mother of Jesus, as the "Container of the Uncontainable