“Old buildings whisper to us in the creaking of
floorboards and rattling of windowpanes.”
–Fennel Hudson
The Hagia Sophia was originally a basilica for the Orthodox Christian Church of Greeks. The present Hagia Sophia completed in 537 is the third one. The design of the building is a combination of traditional design elements of an Orthodox basilica with a large, domed roof and a semi-domed altar with two porches. Hagia Sophia was the central church of the faith in the Byzantine Empire. New emperors would be crowned here, thus the building served a pivotal role in the Byzantine culture and politics. Roman for a brief period took the control of Constantinople and Hagia Sophia. With the emergence of the Ottoman Empire, the building changed from a Church to a mosque. However, in 1935 the Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum. It was July 2020, when President Erdogan declared it a mosque once again.