Hagia Irene

Hagia Irene stands in the first courtyard of Topkapi Palace and remains one of the few Byzantine churches in Istanbul that was not turned into a mosque after 1453. The first church on this spot appeared as early as the reign of Constantine; the present building took shape after the Nika revolt of 532 and acquired its current form under Constantine V in the middle of the 8th century, when the dome was rebuilt after an earthquake. Almost nothing of the decoration is left inside: bare brick walls, rows of windows in the drum and the semicircular steps of the synthronon in the apse, where the clergy sat. In the conch, instead of a mosaic with holy images, there is a plain black cross, a rare surviving monument of the iconoclastic period. Under the Ottomans the building was used to store weapons and trophies, and later it housed the country's first military museum. The church does not function as a place of worship; it is opened for visits and for concerts, the high vaults give a long echo, and performers value the acoustics. The atrium on the western side is considered the only surviving example in Istanbul of such a courtyard attached to a Byzantine church. The building belongs to a type rare in Constantinople: a domed basilica with an elongated narthex and galleries.

On the map