Layered Heritage in Contemporary Art and Urban Culture through the Concept of Palimpsest: The Case of the Chora Church / Kariye Mosque in Istanbul

Abstract

This research explores the concept of palimpsest within the context of contemporary art and urban culture, focusing on Istanbul and Valencia as key sites of layered cultural heritage. Through the lens of visual urbanism and cultural semiotics, it examines how artists today draw upon historical symbols, religious influences, and architectural forms to construct new aesthetic languages. Central to this investigation is the Chora Church (Kariye Mosque) in Istanbul, a monument that embodies the palimpsestic interplay of civilizations. By linking Byzantine artistic traditions with similar expressions in Kievan Rus’, such as the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Alhanbra (Granada, Spain 1238), San Salvador (Toledo, Spaine), this study highlights the transhistorical and transcultural dialogues that continue to shape artistic practice and identity.

Contemporary art is marked by an ongoing process of transformation, driven by the search for new symbolic and aesthetic languages. These shifts are often reflections of wider societal changes-national, cultural, political, and religious. An artist's ability to navigate the future is invariably tied to their understanding of the past.

These frameworks offer a theoretical basis for analyzing urban culture as a field of visual and historical stratification. This volume presents a range of methodological possibilities comfortably nestled under a single conceptual umbrella, demonstrating how the notion of the palimpsest can become a paradigm-shifting framework for future, collaborative research in architectural and landscape history.

Keywords: Palimpsest,  Urban Culture, Chora Church (Kariye Mosqu), Transformation, Culture Heritage.