CHORA CHURCH

Description

Essentials about the Chora Church in brief

The Chora Church is a former Byzantine church located in the Fatih district of Istanbul. It was converted into a mosque under the Ottomans in the early 16th century, restored after 1948 and turned into the so-called Kariye Museum. The church is most famous for its mosaics and frescoes in the Palaiological Renaissance style, which are among the most important and elaborate sacred cycles in the world.

The history of the Chora Church

As early as the 5th century, outside the walls that Constantine the Great had built around his new capital in the 4th century, there was a church called Chora, which means “land, surrounding country”. When Theodosius II moved the defensive walls further west, the name remained, although the complex of buildings was now included in the city proper.

In the 11th century Maria Doukaina, the mother-in-law of Emperor Alexios I, donated the church, which was probably a four-column church, a very popular type of construction at that time. After a partial collapse in the early 12th century, the church was thoroughly renovated and lavishly remodeled by the grandson of the founder, Isaac Komnenos, Alexios I’s third son. However, it was not until the third phase of construction two centuries later that the Chora church as it is seen today came into being. Theodoros Metochites, the chancellor and first treasurer under Andronikos II Palaiologos, had the church, which was in decay, restored from the ground up and decorated with extensive cycles of paintings between 1315 and 1321.

About half a century after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, the Chora Church, which until then had served the Christian rite, was converted into a mosque by Grand Vizier Bayezid II. The mosaics came under plaster or were whitewashed because of the prohibition of images in Islam. Others broke off the walls during the frequent earthquakes. In 1948, an extensive restoration program was launched and the building’s use as a mosque was discontinued. Finally, in 1958, it was converted into a museum open to the public.

The interior of the Chora Church

The mosaics and frescoes are the most important surviving Byzantine pictorial works, both in terms of quality and number. Despite differences in detail, their liveliness and realism point ahead to Italian frescoes of the early Renaissance. They have little in common with the traditional, strictly stylized Byzantine art. The gracefully moving figures lend the depictions an incomparable lightness and elegance, which is additionally emphasized by the fresh color scheme. The wide variety of biblical themes also gives an impression of the creative power of Byzantine masters. The narrative joy and the richness of detail of the mosaics are characteristic. Their leitmotifs are the incarnation of God and the associated redemption of mankind. The second coming of Christ as the central motif of the frescoes of the burial chapel rounds off this concept.