Church of St. Mary of Constantinople (Istanbul)

The Odalar Mosque was an Ottoman mosque in Istanbul. The building was originally a Byzantine-era Eastern Orthodox church of unknown dedication. In 1475, after the Fall of Constantinople, it became a Roman Catholic church, dedicated to Saint Mary of Constantinople, until finally it was converted into a mosque by the Ottomans in 1640. The mosque was destroyed by fire in 1919, and since then has fallen into ruin. As of 2011, only some walls remain, hidden among modern buildings.LocationThe ruins of the building lie in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih, in the neighborhood of Salmatomruk, not far from Edirne Kapı (the ancient Gate of Charisius), more or less halfway between the Chora Church and the Fethiye Mosque. The few remains lie in a courtyard and can be accessed through modern blocks built on Müftu Sokaĝi 20-22.HistoryByzantine AgeBetween the ninth and the tenth century a church with an underlying basement and a crypt was erected on the top of the sixth hill of Constantinople, on a plateau which is limited by the open air cistern of Aetius (now a football field) and by the unidentified Byzantine edifice denominated in Ottoman times as Boĝdan Saray. The dedication of this building is uncertain, but it was probably part of a complex which also included today's Kasım Ağa Mosque and the İpek Cistern, and was almost certainly the katholikon of a monastery.

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