Eski Imaret Mosque

Eski Imaret Mosqueについて

Eski İmaret Mosque was the church of the monastery of Christ Pantepoptes — Christ the All-Seeing — founded by Anna Dalassena, the formidable mother of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who built it before 1087 and retired into it as imperial custom expected of her.

Its moment in history is not a happy one. On 12 April 1204 the emperor Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlos set his headquarters near the monastery, from where he could watch the Venetian fleet under Doge Enrico Dandolo. When the assault succeeded he abandoned his purple tent there, and Baldwin of Flanders spent the night of the victory inside it. Under the Latin occupation the complex was sacked and handed to Benedictine monks.

After 1453 the church became a mosque, and the monastic buildings served as zaviye, medrese and imaret — a soup kitchen — for the Fatih Mosque then under construction. That function gave the building the name it still carries: the old imaret.

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中には何が入っているのか

The plan is cross-in-square, with a central dome and four vaulted cross-arms, in the Middle Byzantine Komnenian manner and completed shortly before 1087. Inside there is a U-shaped gallery over the narthex, marble mouldings and cornices that have survived, and prothesis and diaconicon chapels shaped like clover leaves.

But the reason architectural historians single this building out is on the outside. It is built in the recessed brick technique — courses of brick set back and rendered over, so the mortar bed reads thicker than the brick — and it is the oldest surviving building in Constantinople to show that characteristically Middle Byzantine method. The facades carry cloisonné decorative motifs.

The roofline is the other thing to look for. Its original scalloped, undulating profile was recovered during a restoration in 1970, and it is unlike the flat eaves of most converted churches in the city.

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見学時間の目安

Twenty minutes, and expect most of that to be spent outdoors. This is a single small Komnenian building whose interest is largely its brickwork, its scalloped roofline and its dome as seen from the street; the interior is one modest room and adds little to what the walls have already told you.

A slow circuit of the exterior, reading the recessed brick courses and the cloisonné motifs, is the visit. Fifteen minutes of that plus five for a look inside if access happens to be possible is honest budgeting. It combines naturally with the Zeyrek walk rather than standing alone.

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季節と混雑状況

No visiting hours are published, and here the uncertainty runs deeper than hours. The General Directorate of Foundations lists a restoration completion tender for the building at Fatih, block 2177 plot 5, described as the 2022 restoration completion work for Eski İmaret-i Atik Camii, and no operator announcement of a reopening for worship has been found. Secondary material describes restoration still under way as of 2024. Restoration work that began in 2015 has run a long time.

So the right expectation is an exterior visit, with interior access as a bonus that may or may not be available on the day. Plan the walk around seeing the building from the street, at whatever hour suits the rest of your route, and treat an open door as luck.

Daylight is the only real constraint, since the exterior is the subject.

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チケット

Nothing is published. No operator states an admission fee for Eski İmaret Mosque and no operator states that entry is free, so neither is recorded here — the sources were checked and came back empty on both counts.

The building's status is a converted church serving as a mosque, not a museum, and buildings in that category are not ticketed in Istanbul. There is nothing to book, nothing to queue for and no pass that applies. If the current restoration ends in a reopening as a museum rather than as a mosque, that could change, and any charge would be announced by the foundations directorate or the ministry rather than by a booking platform.

For now, budget nothing for entry and everything for the walk up the hill.

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行き方

The building sits on the Zeyrek slope, the fourth hill, above the valley road and below the ridge. The approach almost everyone uses is from the boulevard at the bottom, near the aqueduct, climbing the stepped and cobbled lanes — it is short in distance and steep in gradient, and the cobbles are uneven and slick after rain. Shoes with a bit of grip matter more here than in most of Fatih.

Coming along the ridge from the direction of the Zeyrek Mosque is gentler and gives a better first sight of the building, since you meet it from above and the roofline reads properly.

Either way the last hundred metres are residential lanes with washing overhead and cars parked at improbable angles. It is a five-minute walk that feels longer going up.

2026-08-24 を確認しました

気をつけるべきこと

The real hazard is arriving to find scaffolding and hoardings. Restoration begun in 2015 was still described as ongoing in 2024, and no reopening notice exists, so a wrapped facade is a live possibility. Do not build a day around getting inside this one.

The building's recent history is also messier than the Wikipedia summary suggests at first glance: it served as a Koran school until 1970, was restored by the architect Fikret Çuhadaroğlu in the 1970s — the restoration that rebuilt the undulating roofline — and then suffered an unauthorised restoration in the 1990s.

One more thing worth knowing: the identification is disputed. Patriarch Constantius I named it as the Pantepoptes monastery in the 1830s, Cyril Mango questioned that and proposed the Yavuz Sultan Selim Mosque site instead, and other scholars have argued it may be the church of St Constantine founded by the Empress Theophano. Guides will state the Pantepoptes attribution flatly; it is not settled.

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写真

This is an exterior building, photographically, and the slope is your friend. From below, the dome and the scalloped roofline sit against sky with the lanes leading up to them; from the ridge above, you get the roof profile itself, which is the single most distinctive thing about the place and is invisible from street level on the flat.

The recessed brick technique needs raking light to show at all. Straight midday sun renders the wall as an even beige; early morning or the last hour before sunset throws the mortar beds into shadow and the courses suddenly read.

Overhead cables and satellite dishes crowd every wide shot here, which is a fact of the neighbourhood rather than a solvable problem — either compose tight on a facade panel, or accept them and let the building sit in its street.

2026-08-24 を確認しました

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