Hagia Sophia: Istanbul’s Holy Wisdom

What is Hagia Sophia?

Hagia Sophia has been three things: the great church of the Byzantine Empire for nine hundred years, an imperial mosque for nearly five hundred, and a museum for eighty-five. Since 2020 it has been a working mosque again, open to visitors outside prayer times.

The name means Holy Wisdom, and it was never a dedication to a saint called Sophia but to the wisdom of God. The building that stands today was completed in 537 under Justinian, the third church on the site, and it was raised in five years — an extraordinarily short time for a structure of that scale.

What makes it matter architecturally is the dome. It is thirty-one metres across and sits on pendentives, curved triangular sections that carry a round dome on a square base. The forty windows around its base make the mass above appear to float, which is exactly what the builders intended. Justinian’s court historian Procopius, writing in On Buildings around 554, put it this way: the dome seems “not to rest upon solid masonry, but to cover the space as though suspended from Heaven by a golden chain.” That is a description of an optical effect, and it still works.

The numbers behind the effect: the dome spans roughly 31 metres and rises about 55 metres above the floor, and it held the record for the largest interior space in the world for close to a thousand years. It changed what buildings could be, and every domed mosque on the Istanbul skyline is in part an answer to it.

Hagia Sophia is part of the Historic Areas of Istanbul, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985.

How do you get to Hagia Sophia?

Hagia Sophia stands at the centre of Sultanahmet, on the old city’s first hill, facing the Blue Mosque across a park. The T1 tram stops at Sultanahmet, a two-minute walk away, and runs from Kabatas through Karakoy and Eminonu, which covers most places a visitor might start from.

From Taksim, take the funicular down to Kabatas and change to the tram. From the Asian side, take a ferry to Eminonu and one tram stop, or use Marmaray to Sirkeci and walk up the hill in about ten minutes.

Topkapi Palace, the Basilica Cistern, the Hippodrome and the Blue Mosque are all within a few hundred metres, which is why most first visits start here.

When is the best time to visit Hagia Sophia

Early morning, as soon as it opens to visitors, is the clear answer. Coach groups arrive mid-morning and the building is at its busiest from then until mid-afternoon.

It is an active mosque, so access pauses for the five daily prayers, and Friday midday is the busiest prayer of the week. Plan around those rather than arriving and waiting.

Light is the other consideration. The forty windows at the base of the dome were designed to be seen working, and they do their best in the morning, when the light comes through at an angle and moves across the gold. Winter mornings, with fewer people inside, are the best combination of all.

What is the history of Hagia Sophia?

Two earlier churches stood here and both burned. The first, dedicated in 360, was destroyed by fire during riots in 404. The second, completed in 415, burned in the Nika riots of 532, when a chariot-racing dispute turned into an uprising that nearly ended Justinian’s reign. Fragments of that second church, carved sheep and a frieze, are still visible in the forecourt.

Justinian rebuilt immediately and on a scale nobody had attempted. The architects were Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, both mathematicians rather than builders by trade, which shows in the geometry. Construction ran from 532 to 537. Material was brought from across the empire: porphyry columns from Egypt, green marble from Thessaly, white from the Marmara islands.

The first dome was too shallow and partly collapsed in an earthquake in 558. The replacement, steeper and stronger, was finished in 562 and is essentially what stands today, though sections fell and were rebuilt in the tenth and fourteenth centuries. The building has survived earthquakes for fifteen centuries in one of the most seismically active regions in Europe.

In 1204 the Fourth Crusade sacked the city and stripped the church of its silver, relics and bronze. In 1453 Mehmed II entered the building on the day Constantinople fell and ordered its conversion to a mosque. Over the following centuries the Ottomans added the four minarets, the mihrab, the minbar and the great calligraphic roundels, and Sinan reinforced the structure with buttresses that are among the reasons it still stands.

In 1935 the Republic turned it into a museum, and the plaster covering the Byzantine mosaics was removed in a long restoration led by the American scholar Thomas Whittemore. In July 2020 it was reclassified as a mosque. The mosaics remain, curtained or lit depending on the area and the time.

What is Hagia Sophia famous for?

It held the title of largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years, until Seville was completed in 1520.

Its dome was the largest in the world until Florence’s in 1436, and the pendentive system used to carry it had not been attempted at that scale before.

It is one of very few buildings to have served as the principal place of worship for two major religions, and its dual identity is visible in a single glance: Christ Pantocrator in mosaic above, and the names of God and the Prophet in eight-metre calligraphy below.

The columns, capitals and marbles were gathered from across the Mediterranean, making the interior an inventory of the late Roman world.

What can you see at Hagia Sophia?

The dome and its windows. Look up first and give it a minute. The ring of forty windows is the whole architectural argument of the building.

The Deesis mosaic in the upper gallery, from the thirteenth century: Christ between the Virgin and John the Baptist, and by common agreement the finest surviving Byzantine mosaic anywhere. The modelling of the faces is unlike anything made before it.

The apse mosaic of the Virgin and Child above the mihrab, from 867 and among the first figural images restored after the iconoclast period.

The imperial mosaics in the gallery, showing Constantine IX and Zoe, and John II Comnenus with Irene, with faces that were altered as emperors changed.

The calligraphic roundels, eight of them, each more than seven metres across and among the largest examples of Islamic calligraphy in existence.

The marble door and the Viking graffiti. In the upper gallery, a ninth-century Norse visitor scratched his name into the parapet. It reads, as far as anyone can tell, Halfdan.

The weeping column, sheathed in bronze with a hole worn into it by centuries of visitors, and the omphalion, the marble circle on the floor where emperors were crowned.

The Ottoman additions: the mihrab set slightly off the building’s axis to face Mecca, the sultan’s lodge, the library of Mahmud I, and the ablutions fountain in the courtyard.

Who are the most famous people in the history of Hagia Sophia

Justinian I commissioned the building after the Nika riots and is said to have walked in on its completion and invoked Solomon, believing he had surpassed the Temple.

Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus designed it. Both were mathematicians, and the building reads as a geometrical proposition carried out in stone.

Empress Theodora, Justinian’s wife, talked him out of fleeing during the Nika riots. Without that, there is no rebuilding and no Hagia Sophia as it stands.

Mehmed II entered the church on 29 May 1453 and ordered its conversion rather than its destruction, which is why it survives.

Mimar Sinan added the buttresses in the sixteenth century that stabilised the structure, and built the tombs of several sultans in the grounds.

The Fossati brothers, Swiss-Italian architects, carried out the major nineteenth-century restoration for Abdulmecid I, uncovering mosaics, recording them, and covering them again.

Thomas Whittemore led the twentieth-century American work that uncovered the mosaics for good after the building became a museum.

What are the best things to do in Hagia Sophia?

Go up to the gallery. The best mosaics are there, and the view down into the nave explains the proportions in a way the floor cannot. The ascent is by a sloped stone ramp rather than stairs, built so that the empress could be carried up.

Give the dome time. Most visitors photograph it and move on. Standing under it for a few minutes while the light shifts is the point of coming.

Find the graffiti. The Viking inscription in the gallery parapet takes some looking for and is worth the effort.

Walk the exterior. The buttresses, the tombs of the sultans and the fountain in the courtyard are part of the complex and most people skip them.

Dress for a mosque. Shoulders and knees covered, heads covered for women, shoes off at the entrance. Scarves are available at the door. Avoid walking in front of anyone praying and keep voices low.

Pair it with what is next door. The Blue Mosque faces it across the park, the Basilica Cistern is a few minutes away, and Topkapi is through the gate behind. The Cistern of Theodosius nearby is the quieter alternative if the queue at the Basilica Cistern is long.

Related guides

• Hagia Sophia Complete Guide — Hagia Sophia is a working mosque, officially Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Serifi, and has been since July 2020.
• 5 Days in Istanbul Itinerary — Five days is the point where Istanbul stops being a checklist and becomes a city you have actually spent time in.
• 4 Days in Istanbul Itinerary — Four days is enough to see Istanbul properly without rushing. It gives you one day for the historic peninsula and one for the Bosphorus.

Frequently asked questions about Hagia Sophia

The best Hagia Sophia Tours

Hagia Sophia is a building where a guide earns their fee. Almost nothing in the interior explains itself: the mosaics are high and unlabelled, the Ottoman and Byzantine layers are interleaved, and the structural story of the dome is invisible unless someone points at the right things. Visitors who go in unguided generally come out impressed but vague.

Guided visits usually combine it with the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome and the Basilica Cistern, which makes geographical sense since all four are within a few minutes’ walk. Longer versions add Topkapi, which needs two to three hours of its own and makes for a full day.

If you prefer to go alone, at least read the mosaics beforehand so you know what you are looking at in the gallery. Early entry matters more here than at most sights, because the building is very different when it is not full.