Outside the Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia Mosque is arguably Türkiye’s most well known monument. It is was originally a Christian church built during the time of Emperor Justinian I. This was the time when Istanbul was still known as Constantinople and was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire and being the capital of the empire, it needs to have its own grand cathedral. For a long time, the cathedral was the largest in the world. It probably would have been nice to have an idea of how the Hagia Sophia looked like when it was still a cathedral. After the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, Mehmed the Conqueror set out converting the cathedral to a mosque.

Having said that, much of the original cathedral can still be seen here. The original Byzantine church structure was retained, but the obvious Christian symbols were removed and replaced with with Islamic ones. As a result, the interior is mostly covered with beautiful Islamic design. Instead of portraits of saints, you have Arabic calligraphy. From the outside, it is hard to tell what changed. The most obvious ones would be the presence of the minarets which is typical of mosques. The outside of the Hagia Sophia isn’t as impressive as the nearby Sultan Ahmed Mosque but you have to remember and this was built in the fourth century. It is impressive that the mosque is still standing considering how old it is.

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