Today I shall take you to a beautiful place full of history. Take my hand and let’s go in the heart of Istanbul.

In front of us stands Hagia Sophia, an old symbol of religion and what man can built for religion and to show of his power. You can see how big is and beautiful she is . While we step inside  you can see the beautiful dome, with nice inscriptions from Koran, the beautiful colors, the large space and light that is inside her.

If you look on the ceilings you can see the gold mosaics with texts from Koran.  The beautiful dome, the  great aches that sustains the dome,   you can see the beautiful marble walls, the beautiful columns, the beauty of their carving, the upper part looks almost like lace.The big beautiful marble columns brought from Egypt.

Hagia Sophia  is old and wise her walls have seen  many things. Hagia was built in Emperor  Justian I times,  on 27 December 537 she was first inaugurated with pomp. Emperor Justinian I, chose  as architects  for his majestic building, two Greek scientist  Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, to build such a big and beautiful building wasn’t an easy task, there were more than ten thousand people hired to work to build it. The marble columns were brought from all over the Empire. Hagia Sophia was build as an orthodox Church, having the rectangular shape of a basilica the symbolize the piety for the Emperor   but also he round shape of  a dome, that symbolize the power. One of the challengers of the architects was to build a dome on a rectangular base, something that wasn’t done before, The architects used large arches to  sustain the domes. Even so 20 years after inauguration her beautiful dome collapsed.  The dome was rebuild by the nephew of Isidore,  he will use this time windows to make the dome lighter an to create more light. At that time Hagia Sophia had her walls decorated with Byzantines mosaic paintings representing the saints.

Hagia Sophia survived many earthquakes and many  power shifts. In 1204  the crusades will come and sack the city and lute treasurers from Hagia Sophia and transform her  for a time into  catholic church . Two hundred years later  another power will rise the Ottoman Empire. In 1453 the city will be conquered and Hagia Sophia will be transformed from a church to mosque  in just 3 days , the beautiful mosaics depicting saints were replaced with mosaics with words from Koran,  a mimbar and mihrab was added, later will be added large discs with calligraphy from Koran plastered over the Christians mosaics , outside will be placed minarets.

Like this a Christian symbol  that lasted almost a 1000 year was transformed in a Islamic symbol.   After  almost 500 years, in 1935 Sophia will become an museum, now when you enter you can see on the left side the Christians symbol that long ago were plastered with Koran symbols and on the right  also  the Koran words symbol of Islam.  The walls of Sophia endured many shift powers, earthquakes and was witness to more than one millennium of history. Is also one of the greatest architectonic jewelry  that  talks about how good the architects and the materials they used were and how good their science was.

I hope you enjoyed our walk through Hagia Sophia and her long history.

Here you can watch a video about the Hagia Sophia history and also how strong this beautiful building is .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlkkLNd4P44

The pictures are not mine they are gather from all around the internet!