Church of St. Theodore - a Late Byzantine church that has survived in the Vef district in Istanbul , for some time acted as a mosque of Molla Gürani ( Molla Gürani Camii ) by the name of its founder [1] . It is an important example of the architecture of Constantinople during the reign of the Comnenos and Paleologists .
| Temple | |
| Church of St. Theodore | |
|---|---|
 View of the temple (right) and its external vestibule (left) from the south | |
| A country |  Turkey |
| City | Istanbul |
| Architectural style | |
| Established | |
Nothing is known about the pre-Turkish history of the temple, and even its dedication is not exactly clarified. Judging by the brickwork, it was elevated to the reign of Alexei I Komnin (1081–1118) or shortly thereafter. After the fall of Constantinople, it was transformed into a mosque , which became famous for the work of Mullah Gurani, the tutor of Mehmed II and the first Mufti of Istanbul.
During the restoration of 1937, mosaics of the Byzantine period were revealed and cleaned from the plaster in the interior of the narthex. It also turned out that during the construction of the temple, columns and other materials of the Early Byzantine period were used. As for the quad, it is still waiting for its study.
The Waqf Office of Turkey announced a building restoration project for 2011, but the project ultimately never came to fruition. In 2014, the building was unrecognizably rebuilt by families who took refuge in this dilapidated medieval complex [2] .
Notes
- ↑ Literature is often referred to as the Vefa- Kilise Mosque ( Vefa Kilise Camii , literally “the church-mosque of Vefa”), although at present this name bears the neighboring Ottoman mosque.
- ↑ In Istanbul, an ancient Byzantine church was rebuilt into a residential building