Chora Church
The small monastery church near the land walls of Constantinople has the last great decorative scheme of Byzantine art. The mosaics and frescoes from around 1315–1321 tell the story of the lives of the Virgin and Christ with a liveliness comparable to Giotto’s contemporary painting in Italy.
Chora means land or country, and the monastery once lay outside the city wall. The church was rebuilt several times, and it acquired its present form when the statesman Theodore Metochites had it restored and decorated in the early 14th century. He was one of the most powerful men in the empire and a learned writer, and in one mosaic he kneels before Christ holding the church in his hands, wearing an enormous turban.
The mosaics in the narthexes tell, in many small scenes, of the Virgin’s childhood and the life of Christ, with buildings and landscapes that give depth and movement. In the funerary chapel the fresco of Christ pulling Adam and Eve from their tombs is one of the most dramatic images in Byzantine art. Under the Ottomans the church was converted into a mosque around 1511, and the images were whitewashed; they were uncovered again in the 20th century when the building became a museum, and in 2020 it was turned back into a mosque.