Today, all of the journalists at the convention sponsored by the International Center for Journalists went on a tour of the Hagia Sophia, the pagan temple-turned church-turned mosque-turned museum that sits atop the city.
It seemed like a rushed tour, as it only lasted a half an hour, and the guide left little time for exploration – I saw tourists in many areas that we never went to, that I wish I could have seen, but I don’t know that it’s worth paying the entrance fee to get into the Hagia Sophia again.
Anyhow, here’s a picture of some of our group, looking somewhat intent on what the tour guide was saying, as he was hard to understand over the hubbub of traffic and construction:
The Hagia Sophia, or “Saint Wisdom” is rumored to have been built on the site of an ancient pagan temple, although no one knows if that’s true. It’s also said the some of the pillars within the temple come from the Temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. No one can be sure if that’s true, either.
The Hagia Sophia has been built and destroyed many times, the original having been built by Romans in 360, but the current one dating back to 537. It’s a stunning monument, built completely without mortar. From the outside, it looked huge, but I am familiar with the cathedrals of Western Europe, and expected the inside to be divided into many smaller rooms. Not so. It was cavernous and huge, so big that I was unable to get an all-encompassing photo. (The enormous amount of rigging for restoration purposes didn’t help, either.)
It was originally meant to be a church, filled with incredibly expensive icons built of the finest materials. These are gone, of course, smashed by Christians in an ancient anti-icon movement. But some of the frescoes are still standing, as with this mural of Jesus that greets you as you enter. The shimmering of the surface is incomparable, as tiny sheets of gold are layered inside the tiles in a painstaking process that has yet to be replicated:
But, of course, in 1453, the Turks conquered Constantinople, and the Hagia Sophia became a mosque. In the next hundred years, minarets were added to the building, and all of the frescoes were covered with plaster. In the long run, this might have been a good thing, as they would not be in nearly as good condition as they are now if the plaster hadn’t protected them from moisture.
Here is a picture of me with my friend Natasha Tynes from the ICFJ, in front of large alabaster ablution fountains. Carved from a single piece of alabaster, they held the water for Muslims to wash before prayers. (We probably shouldn’t have stood exactly in front of them.)
This is my favorite photo, of the low-hanging chandeliers. Because this was built when candles were in use, they had to hang hundreds of feet from the ceiling in order to get enough light for the huge space:
And lastly, here is a picture of the outside in its present state. Since 1935, after the establishment of the Turkish Republic and its secular state, the site has been a museum.
And, of course, here is a picture of the happy ICFJ group. I’m hidden in the back, somewhere.
