[1] The edifice lies in Istanbul, in the district of Beyoğlu, in the neighborhood of Karaköy (ancient Galata), almost at the border with Tophane, at Kemeraltı Caddesi 11, on a terrace at the top of a staircase.

[2] After 1478, the community was repeatedly shuttered by fights among friars,[5] until Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent menaced to convert the building into a mosque for the Moors who, expelled in those years from Spain, were resettling in Galata.

[7] On 18 November 1583, members of the Society of Jesus led by Giulio Mancinelli, sent by Pope Gregory XIII upon request of the Magnifica Communità di Pera (the Genoese administration in Galata), took charge of the church, founding a school in the precincts of the monastery.

[7] In this occasion the Mufti of Istanbul donated the pillars still standing at the top of the staircase, and approved the reconstruction project with a lead roof cover and vaults, elements usually allowed only for mosques.

[7] On 6 July 1735 the body of the Hungarian exile Francis II Rákóczi, considered a national hero in his country, was buried in St. Benoit, next to his mother Zrínyi Ilona.

In 1839, nuns belonging to the Soeurs de la Charité (Daughters of Charity) society came from France and founded the female section of the school.

[2] Originally the small church with three naves had only one dome (the two over the side aisles are later additions), an atrium and a gallery, while the interior was decorated with much admired mosaics depicting the life and passion of Christ.

[8] In the interior, several inscribed gravestones from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remember wealthy Levantine families, church's benefactors, and French Ambassadors.

[7] In the church were among others buried the Croatian noblewoman Jelena Zrinska and her son, the Hungarian aristocrat Francis II Rákóczi, both dead in exile in the Ottoman Empire.