hagia sophia

I have to be honest—the conditions surrounding our visit to Hagia Sophia weren't ideal. Cold, rainy, long line (in the rain) where we had to endure street vendors hawking their crap without anywhere to run... so I was kind of grumpy by the time we got in and I really just wanted to get warm. But that's kind of hard to do in a building that's hundreds of years old (over a thousand if you consider that the original building was built in 360 AD) but once I stopped whining and starting looking up my mind was sufficiently blown. Basically, this place was originally built to be a Greek Orthodox basilica and was at one point the largest structure IN THE WORLD (except for the pyramids), which is crazy. Anyway, after a lot of back and forth, Constantinople was conquered by the Turks and they slapped some minarets on the building and the basilica became a mosque, which is why there is an interesting combination of Madonna and child mosiacs along with Islamic iconography all over the building. In some places you can see where they pulled crosses off the walls and (clearly) the mosaics of Christ and his apostles are in major disrepair.

So it's kind of sad but also beautiful, and (like the Blue Mosque) incredibly difficult to photograph. Blast you, lack of natural light!