NARRATOR: The sketch depicts Christ, framed by a cross in a circle. Near Hagia Sophia, the church of Chora contains a strikingly similar image found in the crown of a dome.

With the birth of a secular Turkish Republic, the Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1935. ... One places a shawl over her head and briefly kneels to make the sign of the cross, ...

Pentcheva argues that Hagia Sophia’s mystical brilliance reveals itself fully only if it is viewed as a vessel for animated light — and sound. Image The building was reopened for worship for ...

Hagia Sophia’s eclectic design makes it a part of the mixed, ... cross-pollinated cultural zone where all kinds of art forms and ideas have melded. As a result, ...

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a decree July 10 converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque, hours after a court declared that the building’s conversion into a museum in 1934 was illegal.

The Hagia Sophia was closed in 1931, and in 1934, Atatürk officially declared it a museum. As part of the new status, the mosaics were publicly revealed for the first time in centuries.

From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern Turkey, systematically killed more than 2 million Christians — 1.5 million ­Armenians and half a million Syriacs, Assyro ...

Once the largest cathedral in the world, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, has stood for more than 1500 years along the banks of the Bosporus Strait and has housed three religious groups. 1 ...

The new Hagia Sophia (literally, 'Divine Wisdom') was in several ways unlike any other building ever constructed in the ancient world. First of all, it enclosed an unprecedented amount of space ...

Unlike the permanent Muslim desecration of Hagia Sophia, after Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, the Jews did not deface or convert the mosque into a Jewish synagogue or temple, even though the ...

Voices The debate over the future of Hagia Sophia tells you everything you need to know about modern Turkey. The monument that served as the centre of Christianity for 900 years and as a mosque ...