Fenari Isa Mosque

The Fenari Isa Mosque is a former Byzantine double-church in Istanbul's Fatih district, today functioning as a working mosque. The northern building was founded around 907 by Constantine Lips as the katholikon of the Theotokos Panachrantos monastery. In the 13th century the empress Theodora Palaiologina added a second church next to it as a mausoleum for the early Palaiologos dynasty; several emperors and empresses were buried here. After the Ottoman conquest of 1453 the complex was converted into a mosque by Alaeddin Ali bin Yusuf Fenari, whose name it still bears. The four-column inscribed-cross plan of the original Byzantine nave survives despite repeated fires and reconstructions. The mosque sits off the standard tourist routes along Adnan Menderes Avenue and rewards visitors interested in pre-Ottoman Constantinople.