Church of the Virgin of the Pharos

The Pharos Chapel, often simply called the Holy Chapel in Western medieval sources, was for centuries the most important reliquary shrine in the Christian world. Located within the Great Palace of Constantinople, it held under the Macedonian and Komnenian emperors fragments of the True Cross, the Crown of Thorns, the Holy Shroud and the Mandylion of Edessa. After the Arab conquest of Jerusalem the chapel was meant to take over the role of the Holy Sepulchre for Christendom. In 1204 the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade sacked its relics; Louis IX of France later purchased many of them and built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to house them. Nothing of the Pharos Chapel itself survives; its location on the southeastern slope of the palace quarter in Istanbul is only conjectured. Today it is an archaeological mystery, not a visitable site.