The original Church of St. Anthony of Padua was built in 1725 by the Italian community of Istanbul, but was later demolished and replaced with the current building which was constructed on the same site. The current basilican church, along with the adjacent residential buildings (known as the St. Antoine Apartmanları) was built between 1906 and 1912 in Venetian Neo-Gothic style, again by the city's Italian community (mostly made up of people of Genoese and Venetian descent, the community amounted to about 40,000 at the start of the 20th century). The building was designed by the Levantine architect Giulio Mongeri, who also designed other important buildings in Turkey, such as the Maçka Palas in Nişantaşı and the Neo-Byzantine Karaköy Palas bank building in Karaköy (Galata), Istanbul, as well as the first headquarters of the Türkiye İş Bankası in Ankara.
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