Built as a church and repurposed during its 1,500‑year history as a mosque, a museum and now a mosque once more, the Hagia ...

The Hagia Sophia is one of the most popular places to visit in Istanbul, Turkiye. It was once a Byzantine church and then ...

The transformation of the Greek Hagia Sophia Cathedral into the Turkish Ayasofya Mosque did not take place gently. Fergus M. Bordewich describes the brutal shift that took place 564 years ago today: ...

Hagia Sophia was the most popular museum in Turkey last year, drawing more than 3.7 million visitors. News reports have said the conversion could occur in time for prayers on July 15, when Turkey ...

Built nearly 1,500 years ago, Hagia Sophia was the first cathedral in the Roman Empire. After a thousand years, the Ottomans converted the structure into a mosque following the sack of Constantinople.

The Hagia Sophia of Istanbul is no stranger to change -- through the centuries the city's architectural jewel has gone from church to mosque to museum, back to mosque again. When it was first ...

Last week, however, a Turkish court ruled the Hagia Sophia's conversion to a museum was unlawful and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared the building a mosque once again, the BBC reports.

In Hagia Sophia, they resound for up to twelve seconds, enveloping worshippers in the sounds of the liturgy — or at least they did, until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan reconverted the historic Chora church, one of Istanbul's most celebrated Byzantine buildings, into a mosque on Friday, a month after opening the famed Hagia Sophia ...

In 1930, Turkey changed the name of the city to Istanbul. Five years later, Hagia Sophia was made into a museum. Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is not the only abused church in Turkey.

The Church of the Hagia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, was first built on that site around 350 AD. The current building was built as the cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople — the ...