After Hagia Sophia, which returned to a mosque last 24 July, the same fate is about to touch another of the main tourist attractions of Istanbul, the Byzantine church of San Salvatore in Chora (Kariye in Turkish), born a Byzantine church, then transformed into a mosque (1511), before being converted into a museum (1945). A decree by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed this morning confirmed the decision of the council of state of last November 19 that canceled the decision by which the museum was established in 1945.
This decision was followed by a period of uncertainty about the fate of the splendid church, paving the way for the reopening to Islamic worship of a structure whose first walls were built before the sixth century, with today’s structure the result of several reconstructions, the most important carried out in 1081 and 1200. The structure contains splendid mosaics and frescoes of the thirteenth century and frescoes, whose fate now remains uncertain, given the incompatibility with Islam. San Salvatore in Chora served for just under a thousand years as an Orthodox church, only to be converted into a mosque in 1511, just over 50 years after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and then became a museum in 1945.
