The Chora Church began in the early 4th century as part of a monastery outside Constantinople's walls, which the Theodosian walls of 413 and 414 later enclosed. Between 1077 and 1081 Maria Doukaina rebuilt it on an inscribed cross plan. Around 1310 to 1317 Theodore Metochites funded the interior mosaics and frescoes, and from 1315 to 1321 he added the funerary chapel, outer buttresses and narthexes.
The style is Late Byzantine, and the mosaics are the finest example of the Palaeologian Renaissance. In the funerary chapel, an Anastasis fresco shows Christ raising Adam and Eve from their tombs.
Hadım Ali Pasha converted it into a mosque in the 16th century, and the images were plastered over. It became a museum in 1945 and opened to the public in 1958. It was reconverted into a mosque in 2020, and it opened for Muslim worship on May 6, 2024.
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