Today, Hagia Sophia is one of the world’s most extraordinary mosques — but it’s more than that. It’s also a symbol, a cultural phenomenon, and a monument.

An alert visitor thwarted an arson attempt at the historic Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul. The incident took place on ...

On 10 July, 2020, one of Turkey’s highest courts ruled in favor of reconverting the Hagia Sophia Museum to a mosque. Within an hour of the ruling, Turkish ...

The right of the sword means converting the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, it means going after Israel over Jerusalem, and pursuing Erdogan’s imaginary mosque that he believes Columbus saw in Cuba ...

When the Roman Emperor, Justinian I, dedicated Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia as a cathedral, he is said to have proclaimed, “Solomon, I have surpassed thee.” Indeed, the church-turned mosque ...

The Hagia Sophia that stands today is the third church built on the same site. The first iteration, built in 360 CE, was damaged by fire and rioting in 404. It was rebuilt by Emperor Theodosius II ...

Istanbul’s historic Hagia Sophia has reopened for Friday prayers for the first time since a decision was made to turn it back into a mosque after more than 80 years as a museum.

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.

Although an annex to Hagia Sophia, the sultan’s pavilion, has been open to prayers since the 1990s, religious and nationalist groups in Turkey had long yearned for the nearly 1,500-year-old ...

Hagia Sophia was built as a church over a Roman temple, and was subsequently converted into a mosque and then a museum. Since 2020 it is used as a mosque once more.© Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images ...

The current Hagia Sophia was built in the 6th century when Constantinople — as Istanbul was then called — was the heart of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire that emerged as Ancient Rome ...