Hagia Sophia - Istanbul
One of Istanbul’s top attractions the Hagia Sophia known as Ayasofya in Turkish, originally built to be the greatest church in all of Christendom on the orders of Emperor Justinian in 532 AD. It served as the largest cathedral in the world for over nine hundred years and is considered to be the finest surviving example of Byzantium architecture. The Hagia Sophia literally meaning “Holy Wisdom” remained as a church and the center of the eastern orthodox religion until 1453, when the city was invaded and conquered by Ottoman Turks. The building was then converted to a mosque at the behest of Sultan Memed ll. A lot of the Christian symbols and artefacts were removed or covered up. Bells, relics and alters were removed whilst mosaics where plastered over or stolen. The addition of minarets and a mimbar (Islamic pulpit) completed the conversion of the building into a mosque. The Hagia Sophia continued to be used as a mosque until 1935 when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk controversially ordered it ...