From the Galata Bridge to Sehzadebasi - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 220

but it seems a little too big in scale for the minaret. The mosque
itself is rectangular, built of squared stone and with a wooden roof;
in its present condition it is without interest. The founder was the
Kazasker (Judge) Hacı Hasanzade Mehmet Efendi who died in 1505;
the mosque therefore must belong to about this date.
THE CHURCH OF ST. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES
If we turn left beyond the mosque and then right at the next corner
into Küçük Mektep Sokağı, we see a Byzantine church at the end of
the street. This is Eski Imaret Camii, identified with virtual certainty
as the church of St. Saviour Pantepoptes, Christ the All-Seeing. This
church was founded about 1085 to 1090 by the Empress Anna
Delassena, mother of the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus and founder
of the illustrious Comneni dynasty which ruled so brilliantly over
Byzantium in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Anna ruled as co-
emperor with her son for nearly 20 years and during that time exerted
a powerful influence on the afairs of the Byzantine state. In the year
1100 the Empress retired to the convent of the Pantepoptes and spent
the remainder of her life in retirement there. She died in 1105 and
was buried in the church which she had founded. The church was
converted into a mosque almost immediately after the Conquest. For
a time it served as the imaret of the nearby Fatih Camii, and thus it
came to be known as Eski Imaret Camii.
The building is a quite perfect example of an eleventh-century
church of the four-column type, with three apses and a double narthex,
many of the doors of which retain their magnificent frames of red
marble. Over the inner narthex is a gallery which opens onto the nave
by a charming triple arcade on two rose-coloured marble columns.
The church itself has retained most of its original characteristics,
though the four columns have as usual been replaced by piers, and
the windows of the central apse have been altered. The side apses,
however, preserve their windows and their beautiful marble cornice.
The dome too, with 12 windows between which 12 deep ribs taper
out towards the crown, rests on a cornice with a meander pattern
of palmettes and flowers. The exterior, though closely hemmed in
by the surrounding houses, is very characteristic and charming, with