Even though less than 1% of population in Turkey is Christian, which rates the country at the very end among its neighbors regarding the Christian percentage, the largest city of Turkey does have what to offer when it comes to Christian shrines. Whether you’re a believer in search of a Sunday mass or liturgy, or a tourist eager to discover as much as possible about Istanbul, you will not be left disappointed in this city of extraordinary architecture and breathtaking history.

As the vast majority of Christians and Jews of Turkey lives in Istanbul, it is only natural to find the biggest number of churches exactly in this city. Add to that the fact that for the most of its history Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, was a Christian settlement, and that it was one of the five Patriarchates of the ancient Pentarchy, you shouldn’t be surprised upon arriving to find numerous Churches represented in this now mainly Islamic city. Istanbul is host to shrines of great variety of Churches, those including Eastern Orthodox and Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Assyrian, Protestant, Catholic etc.

The Christianity in Istanbul has a long history, and some of the churches date back as far as to the 4^th and the 5^th century. A great number of those, however, were converted to mosques in the century to come after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. There were numerous reasons for doing so, some of the biggest being the need of religious and educational centers, the fact that the existing shrines were easily adaptable for the new purpose, and also the decrease of the Christian population in some of the neighborhoods in Istanbul, which led to the moment when Christian shrines were no longer needed in those districts.

Although the list of churches converted to mosques is quite long, there are still numerous Christian holy places in Istanbul. Many of them take pride of being the oldest, the most beautiful or the most important of all the churches in this diverse city. The ones definitely deserving a place on your to-see-list when visiting Istanbul you’ll find listed below.