Museum· Fatih, İstanbul
Hagia Sophia
Ayasofya
Justinian's 6th-century cathedral, mosque since 1453 — the dome that defined a millennium of architecture.
Story
Justinian rebuilt this church for the third time in 537, after the Nika riots burnt the previous version. For the next 916 years it was the largest enclosed space on earth — a single 31-metre dome floating on pendentives, a feat Roman engineers had failed at for centuries. The Ottomans turned it into a mosque in 1453 without changing the structure; the four minarets came later, one for each of the next four sultans.
Did you know
- 10,000 workers built it; construction took five years.
- The dome is 31 m across — the largest in the world the day it opened.
- The marble columns were quarried from older Roman temples across Anatolia.
- The Empress's loge is faced with the rare 'Holy Marble', mined only on the island of Marmara.
Practical info
- Location
- 41.0083°N · 28.9800°E
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