Hagia Sophia

I was a bit whiny when I first arrived in Turkey.  Accustomed to spending $16/day for food, entertainment and accommodation in India, paying 20 Turkish Lira to enter the Hagia Sophia pissed me off enough that it tainted my enjoyment of the place once I'd entered. I further took the situation personally insulting when they didn't allow me to take my tripod. 

Oy. We all do this sort of thing. It's the brain's talent for soiling it's own fun.

I don't know what's up with the Santa looking dude to the left.  He stood there for the better part of a day with giant prayer beads in his hand. If my friend hadn't commented on him, I might have concluded that he was an autonomous aspect of my own fragmented mind projected upon consensus reality. Turkish Santa is standing in front of the Hagia Sophia (direct attention to dome and spikes in the background).

Let's get a little closer...

Yup.  That's closer.

This is actually less close, but we're looking at it from a roof at sunset. Which is cool.  And there's a seagull looking at it too. 

Like a lot of the things to see in Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia is insanely old. It's been around since the year 360, functioning as a (Constantinople's) cathedral until 1453--a big year in Turkey--the year the Ottoman Turks took over. It was the world's largest cathedral for almost 1000 years. It's called one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture.

When the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople (1453), the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque and the Christian images inside were plastered over with Islamic stuff.

In 1935, the building was opened as a museum.

Restoration process are on-going, or seem to be.  If you pay 20 Turkish Lira, you can go in this very impressive structure and see old, weird Christian iconography, a lot of which is ruined with time.  Some examples:

 

Grumpy angel. All sorts of weird.  

After it's conversion into a museum, restorers have been faced with an issue: uncovering the Christian iconography means destroying the Islamic art plastered over top. This is debated most heatedly for the domed roof, seen in the two pictures below, where Islamic calligraphy may be covering a Christian mosaic of "Christ as Master of the World".  I'm serious about that, too.  Google it if you don't believe me. 

In through stained glass windows, streams of light glare into the huge, stadium-like hollows of the building.  ... ... .. And...whatever other poetic phrases that can be used to describe these photos.