Istanbul Attractions

Venue: Haghia Sophia    When: Daily; not Mon

The Haghia Sophia is Istanbul's most remarkable building, which is saying something in a city with such extraordinarily fine architecture. Built in 535 AD by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, this religious site has not only withstood several natural disasters but has also changed faith twice.

The Haghia Sophia (meaning Divine Wisdom) was the most famous church in Christendom for the entire medieval period. It was designed by two Athenian mathematicians who used their knowledge to create a structure which supported the largest dome in the world (surpassed when St Peter's was raised in Rome). So unusual was its construction that many pious Christians were afraid to enter the portals because they believed it might fall on their heads!

When the Venetians sacked Constantinople during the disastrous Fourth Crusade (1204 AD), they carted off treasures galore from that crumbling capital of Christendom. The Haghia Sophia - the most sacred space in the city - was not spared. Holy relics including a trace of Christ's blood and a piece of the Holy Cross, a "not inconsiderable piece of St John" and St James' arm were all taken and later scattered around various churches in Western Europe.

Even the sacred altar, "formed of all kinds of precious materials and admired by the whole world", was broken up and shared as booty amongst the soldiers. Incidentally, many of those gems found themselves set into the Pala D'Oro, a screen comprised of gold and ostentatiously large jewels, which currently resides behind the main altar of St Mark's in Venice. It is even recorded that a common harlot danced into the Haghia Sophia as it was being ransacked. Apparently she sat in the Patriarch's seat and sang obscene songs.

Too heavy to steal, however, were the porphyry columns holding up the roof. They still stand, cold to the touch, nearly two millennia after they were floated to Constantinople from the upper reaches of the Nile in what is now Sudan. Stone from all over the Byzantine Empire was used to build the Haghia Sophia - from Anatolia, Syria and the Pelopponese just for starters. So solid were its foundations and so impressive was its size, the Muslim conquerors of the 15th century turned it into a mosque by building a minaret and a mihrab into its eastern facing wall.

Today it is a museum. There is no church music to bring alive those ancient acoustics, nor praying masses prostrating themselves to a higher God. There is just the scuffling sounds of tourist feet silenced by the grandeur of this solemn and forgotten building.