Architectural Features

The Kariye Mosque, which looks like a simple building with its stone and brick walls when viewed from the outside, is a work of art strengthened by the mosaic decorative elements inside.

The building took its present form after major construction and restoration works in different periods.

Only the pulley of the dome of Kariye is original. The destroyed dome was made of wood and covered with plaster. The naos plan of the twelfth century was not changed in the fourteenth century and the same form was preserved. The high dome of the dome is on four short barrel vaults carried by four pillars and forming the arms of the plan. This high pulley provides light to the interior with sixteen long windows.

Kariye consists of five main architectural units. The Outer Narthex, the Inner Narthex, the Naos, the two-storey annex on the north side and the parekklesion on the south side.

At the east end of the naous, there is a bema. On both sides of the bema are domed pastophorion rooms. The main entrance to the naos is through the large portal in the centre, which opens from the inner narthex, and through a smaller door in the north, which has no counterpart on the south side. Of the pastophorion rooms on either side of the bema, the room on the north side opens directly into the bema, while the room on the south opens into the parekklesion on the south. On the south side of the naos, there is a corridor connecting the naos to the parekklesion.

The two-storey annex adjoining the north side of the Naous has longitudinal rooms with barrel vaults on each floor. The upstairs room measures 2.97m x 9.97m and the downstairs room is a passage corridor measuring 2.99m x 10.14m.

The inner narthex is located on the west side of the naos and consists of four unequal space units. The units on the south and north sides are covered with a dome, while the others are vaulted. The entrance to the inner narthex is through a large central door on the west side, opening from the outer narthex.

The outer narthex consists of five spaces of unequal size on the west side of the inner narthex, and two large space units on the south side, which merge with the additional chapel and surround the inner narthex from the south. These space units are also covered with vaults.

There are a total of eight grave arcosolia, four in the pareclesion, one on the north wall of the inner narthex, and three on the west wall of the outer narthex.

The parekklesion was built in the fourteenth century and is adjacent to the south side of the naos. Its longitudinal rectangular plan with a single nave seems to be a direct continuation of the narthex. The parekklesion consists of two adjacent square units of the same size, and a bema with a width almost the same as the nave.

The interior has an architectural integrity. The three arches, one on the east side, one in the centre and the third on the west side, and the apse and the eastern and western space units, which are separated from each other by pilasters descending to the ground by slightly protruding from the walls as an extension of these arches, do not disrupt this spatial integrity neither functionally nor visually