It ranks as the first church completed in Constantinople, before Hagia Sophia, during its transformation from a Greek trading colony to the eastern capital of the Roman Empire.

According to later tradition but disputed by some scholars, the Roman emperor Constantine I commissioned the first Hagia Irene church in the 4th century, which was completed by the end of his reign (337).

By Emperor Constantius II’s reign (r. 337-361), the city featured an impressive amount of public and political institutions: a Senate building, libraries, bathouses, and churches.

One of the early challenges facing the developing Christian Church was the Arian controversy, which centered around Christ being divine or not.

To resolve this issue, a council was held at Nicea that resulted in the widely accepted Nicean Creed, which stated that Christ was begotten from God, and as such is divine.

Jews were alienated from Byzantine society, and Jewish writings began shifting from Greek to Hebrew as they retreated to the safety of their own culture.

The Hagia Irene church witnessed one of the most devastating episodes in the history of Constantinople as a city, which was the Nika Revolt in 532.

Around the time of Justinian’s campaign of religious consolidation,[12] A riot broke out after a chariot race at the Hippodrome that nearly saw the emperor deposed.

[13] The Hagia Irene was destroyed during the revolt, but it is unknown why it was targeted by the rioters (although it was the seat of the Patriarchate, which is significant considering the timing of the riot just several years after Justinian’s initiation of a widespread crackdown on religious dissent).

[14] Additionally, the church had hospices added to it to service the poor and sick, and Justinian endowed it with regular funds to keep it running.

[15] A similar endeavor happened earlier under Constantine, where he built several churches in the easternmost portions of his empire as part of a good-will project that not only included the building of architectural works, but charity to the poor as well.

[17] In 1846, Marshal of the Imperial Arsenal, Ahmed Fethi Paşa, made the church a military antiques museum.

Today, the Hagia Irene serves mainly as a concert hall for classical music performances, due to its extraordinary acoustic characteristics and impressive atmosphere.

For many years, the Hagia Irene was only accessible during events or by special permission, but the museum has been open to the public every day except Tuesday since January 2014.

Hagia Irene has the typical form of a Roman basilica, consisting of a nave and two aisles, which are divided by three pairs of piers.

[24] Information put forward by author Jelena Bogdanovic in her article “The Relational Spiritual Geopolitics of Constantinople, the Capital of the Byzantine Empire” may highlight some continuity with this tradition.

Emperor Constantine had a porphyry statue of himself dressed as Helios, and this statue had what is believed to be fragments of the True Cross and the axe Noah used to build the Ark inserted into the column, which may signify the transition between the traditional pagan religions of Rome into Christianity as the eventual state religion.

[12] Work from other scholars keep in line with the idea of continuity, but some of the content written indicates that the displaying of “personal” propaganda had to be toned down.

When Justinian entered the church for the first time, he boasted that he had surpassed Solomon, a reference to part of the text on the Polyeuktos' plaque.