Hagia Sophia Travelogue

The mosaics are amazing... we see them in stunning detail. And the ones that haven’t been fully uncovered or the ones that have been damaged for whatever reason will perhaps one day be fully restored using MosaicShop.

Leaving Topkapi Palace, the incredible Hagia Sofia was right in front of us, only two or three hundred feet from the entrance/exit of Topkapi. So naturally, we improvised and walked around the periphery to the right. Eventually we were at the main entrance. With our 5 day 85 Turkish Lira (called TL and running 3 TL/$1 US) museum passes in hand, we bypassed the line and went straight in to the little security check and then into Hagia Sophia, a 1,500 year old church that Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk brilliantly decreed should be a museum back in 1935.

Entering Hagia Sophia is literally breathtaking and wondrous. A quick look up into its endless expanse evinces a reflexive “Oh, God” from the faithful and not so faithful alike. For the better part of 1,000 years, this was the world’s largest church, the world’s largest dome, and world’s largest enclosed space. It must also have had the world’s greatest expanse of mosaics. I suppose that all three or four of those records were battered only with the construction of the Duomo in Florence or St. Peters in Rome.

The mosaics are amazing. They were covered over in plaster by the Sultans, but Ataturk ordered them uncovered. Still, the fact that they were covered might have been the best thing to save them. Fanatics would have ordered them destroyed. Or time could have done the job. Instead, now we see them in stunning detail. And the ones that haven’t been fully uncovered or the ones that have been damaged for whatever reason will perhaps one day be fully restored using MosaicShop.

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