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Turkish: Aya Yorgi, Greek: Agíou Geōrgíou
Photo: Antoloji, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This is modest from the outside, as the Ottomans would not permit non-Muslim religious buildings to rival the mosques. The interior is lavish but its chief importance is as the senior Eastern Orthodox church. Their Patriarchate has been housed here since 1586 when they were ejected from Agia Sophia.
The Patriarchal Cathedral Church of St. George is the principal Eastern Orthodox cathedral located in Istanbul, Turkey, formerly Constantinople. Since about 1600, it has been the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople whose leader is regarded as the primus inter pares in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and is frequently looked upon as the spiritual leader of the 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Turkish: Özel Fener Rum Lisesi, Greek: Μεγάλη του Γένους Σχολή
This is the red-brick castle seen south of St George. Built 1881/83, it teaches the standard Turkish curriculum plus Greek language and culture, and the tower houses an observatory. No visits.
Sveti Stefan Kilisesi
A remarkable Bulgarian Orthodox church better known as Demir Kilise, "Iron Church", as it's a cast iron prefab. The Bulgarians split from the Greek Orthodox and established their own wooden church in 1870, which burned down. The ground was too weak for a masonry or concrete structure so they opted for cast iron. The sections were cast in Vienna, shipped here and assembled, to open in 1898. The church was renovated in 2018, but the archpatriarchate building across the street remains a gaunt shell.
Pammakaristos Church
The Church of Theotokos Pammakaristos ("All-Blessed Mother of God") was built between the 11th and 12th centuries. The parekklesion or side-chapel was added maybe 1300, with rich mosaics. The main building became a mosque in 1591, named for Sultan Murad III's conquest (fetih, hence Fethiye) of Georgia and Azerbaijan: the interior was opened up, but the chapel was undisturbed and in modern times became a museum. In 2020 the entire building was proclaimed a mosque, and every scrap of Byzantine artistry was covered up, so now there's nothing worth seeing.
This was built in the 1430s by Grecian Jews ("Romaniotes") from the city of Ohrid, now in North Macedonia. The district of Balat was a Jewish quarter, swelled from 1492 by those expelled from Spain. The synagogue is only open for pre-arranged tours.
The original mosque was built between 1463-1470 by the Greek architect Atik Sinan, by order of Sultan Mehmet II the Conqueror, on the site of the former Church of the Holy Apostles, which had served as Byzantine Imperial burial place for a thousand years. The grand complex with eight medreses, a library, hospital, hospice, caravanserai, market, hamam, primary school and public soup kitchen was smashed again and again by earthquakes, and the present building is from 1771 to a different design. The interior is lavish, and outside is the ornate tomb of Mehmet II and his wife Gülbahar Hatun.