The Church of Christ the Savior in the Fields from the ensemble of the monastery in Chora is the best Byzantine church in Istanbul that has preserved its original appearance. Since 1948, it has been open to tourists as the Kariye Museum, and is one of the Istanbul World Heritage Sites.
The name comes from the fact that before the erection of the current city walls by Theodosius II, the church stood outside the walls of the imperial capital, to the south of the Golden Horn. The surviving building was built by the diligence of Maria Duca, mother-in-law of Emperor Alexei Komnenos, in 1077-81. Half a century later, part of the arches collapsed, probably due to an earthquake, and the youngest son of Alexei financed the restoration work.
Chora Church was rebuilt again after the Palaiologos came to power, in 1315-21. The great logothete Theodore Metochites acted as ktitor. The mosaics and frescoes ordered by him are an unsurpassed artistic achievement of the Palaiologan Renaissance.
During the siege of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the heavenly intercessor of the city, the icon of Our Lady Hodegetria, was brought to the monastery. Half a century later, the Turks plastered over all the images from the Byzantine period in order to turn the church into a Karie-Jami mosque. Chora came back to life as a Byzantine island in the middle of a modern Islamic city as a result of restoration work in 1948.