The Constantinopolitan church now known as Istanbul’s Kariye Mosque is the Chora Church, renowned for its Byzantine mosaics and frescoes. The monument stood outside the original fourth-century walls of Constantinople, which helps explain the name Chora, meaning “country” or “outside the city.”
The surviving decoration was created mainly in the early fourteenth century, during the late Byzantine period. Theodore Metochites, a statesman and scholar, sponsored major rebuilding and decoration between about 1315 and 1321. The mosaics present scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin, while the parekklesion contains an extensive cycle of Last Judgment and resurrection imagery.
The church was converted into the Kariye Mosque after the Ottoman conquest. It later served as a museum before returning to mosque use in the twenty-first century. The building’s decoration is valued for its energetic figures, complex narrative scenes, and refined use of color.
“Chora” is not the name of a separate architectural style. It identifies this particular church and its historical location beyond Constantinople’s early city wall.