Ağia Sophia

This tremendous building is an astonishing survivor from ancient times. Its construction was completed in 537 AD, after the mother of all riots in 532 AD had destroyed a previous church on the same spot. Despite foundations only a meter deep, it has withstood invasions, revolts and earthquakes over 15 centuries.

Recently the building has been re-converted to a mosque (it had been officially a museum since the 1930s). This was considered a controversial step, yet the reality is that the new green carpeting and the general clean-up improve the experience. The passage of the centuries had left its interior dark, dirty and stripped of its original decorations, and in recent years it had often been subject to repairs with intrusive scaffolding. Now the sheer scale of the building is more apparent: it is very Roman in the huge size of its doorways, its corridors and its vast central space.

It’s well worth walking up the cobbled ramps to the first floor, to get a better perspective on the building and to see the mosaic portraits of Christ, John the Baptist and the various emperors and their wives. Also the grave of the Venetian Doge Dandolo, a man so greedy and scheming that he makes private equity bosses seem like Mother Teresa. But sadly, at the time of writing (March 2022), the whole first floor gallery is closed to tourists.